The President, Mrs McAleese, has spoken of "the huge level of dysfunction" in Northern communities still trapped by sectarianism and waiting to feel the effect of the so-called "peace dividend".
She says there is much still to be done to rescue "pockets of despair" untouched by changing political relationships and transformed political landscapes.
The President's implicit warning about the danger of continuing political stalemate in Northern Ireland came during a one-day visit to London, during which she was asked about the spate of suicides in North Belfast.
Referring to the most recent tragedies, Mrs McAleese said: "I don't think it takes rocket science to work out what the problems there are. Ardoyne is one of those places that is still waiting . . . to see the effect of what all the rest of us call the peace dividend. For many of the people who live there, whether they are Catholic or Protestant, loyalist or republican . . . they are dealing with endemic unemployment, which has been endemic for generations ... they are dealing with right-up-front-in-your-face everyday sectarianism; they are dealing with streets that aren't safe, literally from 100 yards to the next; they are dealing with the presence of paramilitarism, which I understand was a factor certainly in the more recent deaths... and the consequences almost of policing by paramilitaries.
"There is a huge level of dysfunction in which it must be very difficult for young people to feel hope in the future, to feel a sense of joy, a sense of liberation." This must be particularly so for young people who dropped out of school early and who were particularly vulnerable.
Asked why, when a kind of peace at least had followed the Troubles, such a social phenomenon should present itself now, the President said: "Insofar as I can intuit any kind of answer, I think it has a lot to do with the pace at which people are moving in terms of the peace dividend . . . It's not evenly distributed in terms of its benign effect."
The President was speaking to journalists at the Irish Embassy during a busy schedule which combined a visit to the Southwark Irish Pensioners' Project and a speech last night at the London Business School celebrating the "much healthier balance and much greater variety" in Ireland's economic and political relationship with Britain.