Scholarship honours murdered boy

Mr Ahern spoke of a multi-ethnic society

The Irish foreign minister has helped establish a scholarship in memory of murdered County Antrim teenager Michael McIlveen.

Dermot Ahern was in Ballymena to attend the launch of peace and reconciliation initiative New Day.

It aims to encourage young people in the area to address their own sectarian prejudices.

The Irish government has given almost £60,000 towards the Michael McIlveen Scholarships.

The 15-year-old died after being attacked by a gang in Ballymena in May last year.

Several youths are awaiting trial in relation to the Catholic teenager's death.

'Do not realise'

Under the initiative, pupils from nine Protestant and Catholic schools will be chosen each year to work on special reconciliation projects.

Mr Ahern said the nine schools participating in the Ballymena Learning Together project had a role to play in decommissioning sectarian attitudes among young people.

"I suppose it is a catchphrase that young people are the future, but they are the future because young people now do not remember all the awful incidents we had - they don't remember Enniskillen, they don't remember the Omagh bombing, the Loughinisland shootings and all those terrible incidents," he said on Wednesday.

"From that point of view, as one person said to me earlier this morning, we grow up in a way that perhaps we are bigoted and we do not realise we are bigoted.

"People need to break out of that and through projects like this with young people from schools learning at the very bottom they will realise there is a different life, particularly in the multi-ethnic society we have now."

Kate Magee, the principal of St Patrick's College where Michael was a pupil, said his murder had "acted as a catalyst" for action.

The 15-year-old died after being attacked by a gang in Ballymena

"The fact pupils from different schools have been involved in different groups means they are meeting children from other schools that they probably wouldn't have met," she said.

Meanwhile, Mr Ahern has backed a cross border campaign set up by the family of County Armagh murder victim Paul Quinn.

The 21-year-old died after he was savagely beaten at a farm shed in County Monaghan last month.

His family has launched a Justice For Paul campaign. Mr Ahern said people with information must come forward.