How to Fix Northern Ireland

By: Malachi O'Doherty

Narrated by: Alan Turkington

In this thought-provoking and engaging book, Malachi O'Doherty argues that division in Northern Ireland is fundamentally not about whether the country should be governed as part of Ireland or as part of Britain—as presumed by the Good Friday Agreement—but rather is entirely sectarian, an inter-ethnic stress comparable to racism.

Part memoir, part history and part polemic, How to Fix Northern Ireland shows how the split between Catholics and Protestants infests everyday life—from education and segregated housing, from street protests, bonfires and parades to the high politics of power sharing and Brexit—and asks what can be done to solve a centuries-old social rift and heal the relationship at the heart of the problem.

©2023 Malachi O'Doherty (P)2023 W.F.Howes Ltd

Very well read, but not what it says on the tin

Apart from the final brief chapter (which would have worked better as an introduction), this is not at all about "how to fix NI". But okay, let's imagine that the title was what the book is really arguing: "Sectarianism in NI: An Enduring Problem". There is some interesting storytelling, some vivid anecdotes, and occasionally a hard-hitting analysis. But overall, I found the bulk of the book repetitive and superficial. It is resolutely Belfast-centred, with Derry and rural NI noticed only fleetingly. O'Doherty fixates on incidents in social media, a single scene from Derry Girls, an anecdote about an acquaintance, in agonizing detail. Meanwhile, his definition of sectarianism seems so elastic as to encompass everything stemming from, reflecting, coinciding with, or constitutive of Northern Ireland's divided society. This feels like padding. Moreover, the author notices positive developments like integrated education so grudgingly as to give the impression that he really disapproves of them. He has the germ of an important idea, but it could have been better expressed in an op-ed or two.