The project, located on the site of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard, was first launched in 1995 by Bill Clinton at the Washington Peace Conference, and includes plans for housing, an educational campus and a theme park based on the tragic history of the Titanic, the unsinkable ship that went down on its first voyage, with the loss of over a thousand lives.

The ambitious venture has been around for a considerable number of years and has attracted substantial media coverage throughout the world.

Derry citizens were outraged and rightly so, that the Assembly Executive had to all extents and purposes, by passed Derry in favour of Belfast. It touched the raw nerve of them and us but it was a positive wake up call to the North West, coming almost a year after Martina Anderson launched the Stand up for Derry campaign, voted down and vetoed by the SDLP and the DUP in Derry City Council.

When Martina Anderson asked the people of this City to stand up for the town they claim to love so well, she was issuing an invitation to all the stakeholders in the City to face down the inequality and discrimination that had been Derry's lot since partition. For this is not just about Belfast getting more than Derry, This is about giving notice to Unionism of whatever hue, that the days of second class citizenship for Derry are no longer acceptable. That the days of the disparity in the allocation of resources, whether financial or in the distribution of staff will not be tolerated. That there must be a root and branch change in the higher echelons of the Civil Service, the majority of whom have never progressed beyond the Ponderosa on the Glenshane Pass.

It is four years since Conal Mc Feely, of Creggan Community Enterprises, claimed that Derry faced major discrimination from Government agencies because of the failure of local public bodies, including Derry City Council, Invest Northern Ireland and the Department of Social Development, to tackle the inequality problem head on. He called at that time for a more proactive and innovative approach stressing that Derry citizens have a right to demand a better and more transparent service from their public servants. Sadly his call for unity of purpose to tackle the issue was ignored in much the same way as the Stand up for Derry campaign, by a mindset not far removed from the paranoia of Unionism, and petty political point scoring.

At a time when not just Derry but the entire world is facing into a bleak future of more job losses, food and fuel shortages, home repossessions, common sense should tell the politicians, public servants, the business community, Church leaders, the community and voluntary sector, and the people of this City, that we all need to be singing from the one hymn sheet, if we are to survive a crisis that some economic pundits claim is worse than the 'dirty thirties'.

There are some indications that we are getting our act together and not before time.