Nationalist claims that they are worse off than unionists in Northern Ireland are bogus, Democratic Unionist MP Gregory Campbell claimed tonight.
Addressing nationalists and republicans in west Belfast, the East Derry MP said it was time the myth that unionists were better off was destroyed.
Appearing at a debate which included Sinn Féin's Mr Alex Maskey, he said: "For many years the unionist contention was that there has been too many concessions to republicans but on top of that the very fundamental underlying basis for resentment among nationalists - disadvantaged and disenchantment - is much more prevalent among unionists.
"Where better than on the Falls Road in Belfast, for so long the centre piece of republican mythology, to slay the monster of inaccurate prejudice?
"I have obtained figures from the government which demonstrate the accuracy of unionist claims and lays bare the bogus nature of nationalist and republican hyperbole."
Mr Campbell, a former regional development minister at Stormont, said that according to answers to parliamentary questions 40 times more public money had been spent over the past five years on promoting the Irish language compared to the Ulster Scots.
This amounted to over stg£39 million compared to under £900,000 on Ulster Scots.
He also claimed that £9 million in public funds had been spent on Gaelic games like hurling and Gaelic football, equalling the amount spent on soccer, rugby and cricket collectively in Northern Ireland over the same five-year period.
The Democratic Unionist MP also noted that a recent report had shown that over a three-year period only 44 per cent of aid under European Union special programmes had gone to projects in unionist areas compared to 56 per cent for nationalists.
The Labour Force Survey, he said, showed that in the period between 1990 and 2001, only 19,000 of the 78,000 additional jobs created in Northern Ireland went to the Protestant community.
"In other words three times more Catholics than Protestants get jobs now in Northern Ireland," Mr Campbell said.
"This is untenable, unfair and cannot continue.
"In education over the past five years the capital spending allocations between the maintained and controlled sectors show no disadvantage to the maintained sector whatsoever.
"Expenditure related to inquiries now top some £100 million, dealing with the deaths of 14 nationalists in Londonderry [on Bloody Sunday] over 30 years ago.
"Nothing has been spent on inquiries into the deaths of unionists anywhere in Northern Ireland."
PA