CONCERN continues to grow about loyalist-linked groups benefitting from Stormont’s Social Investment Fund. However, a wider threat is being missed. The £80 million fund is part of the Executive Office’s overall anti-poverty and cohesion strategy, another key part of which is the £45m urban villages programme. This will build clusters of commercial units in deprived parts of inner Belfast and Derry, with the aim of attracting small businesses and independent retailers. These are the targets most vulnerable to paramilitary protection demands, which did so much to cause deprivation in the first place. In a court case two years ago, involving an alleged UDA racket in south Belfast, a PSNI officer said: “Extortion and paramilitary blackmail is going on in Northern Ireland today. It’s as prevalent in areas of Belfast as it was 20 to 30 years ago. Businesses can’t work unless they pay the paramilitaries.” What guarantee do we have that Stormont is not simply luring in a new set of victims?
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Nama chiefs have offered an extraordinary insight into why the agency’s northern loan book was sold to a US investment firm. Speaking to a Dail committee, director Oliver Ellingham said Nama was told that “political forces in Northern Ireland would rather have these assets controlled by an American than an entity from the south.” Fellow director Willie Soffe said: “There was a problem with part of the Northern Ireland political establishment or family having somebody from the south there long-term.” Why on earth should this have been a factor when selling £1.2 billion of Irish taxpayer assets?
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For their first monthly ‘opposition day’ debate, back in September, the UUP and SDLP demanded action on rural bank closures - something beyond the executive’s control. This month the opposition parties did better, working jointly to call for more social and affordable housing. Exchanges were informed and relevant but there were still some astonishing omissions. In a 90-minute debate, housing benefit was not mentioned once and the word ‘rent’ was only heard twice in passing. There was no reference to the executive’s missing report into the private rental market and no real analysis of the wider market failures that drive demand for social and affordable homes. Instead, members from all parties spent a lot of time agreeing that housing is good, especially for families, communities, children, kittens and so on. It is also apparently a “human right”, although not one that can be found in any actual human rights law. Does anyone believe voters notice this platitudinous posturing?
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The SDLP has begun accusing the British government of “nativism”. Presumably this is because it cannot make an insult out of ‘nationalism’. Party leader Colum Eastwood has been even ruder, saying Stormont should be “kicking the door in of the British prime minister” and accusing unionists of fearing “holy water” and a “papist conspiracy” for not attending all-Ireland Brexit talks. Last month, Eastwood seemed to perfectly capture the mood when he warned that “northern nationalists are once more a restless people.” However, since that chillingly perfect turn of phrase, he does rather seem to have lost the run of himself.
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As the Brexit temperature rises it would be useful to have the rulings from this month’s two relevant judicial reviews in Belfast, especially the one brought by victims campaigner Raymond McCord, which specifically queried Brexit’s impact on the peace process. Court reports and expert testimony suggest leaving the EU could be found to be legally irrelevant to the Good Friday Agreement, which might assist in bringing temperatures down. As the McCord case concluded, the judge said he would give it his “immediate consideration”. Alas that can still be a long time in legal-land. When the gay cake appeal case finished five months ago, Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan promised a verdict “as soon as possible.” It is due to be delivered next Monday.
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UK farm minister George Eustice has told a DUP breakfast in Belfast that agriculture “must move away from the notion of subsidies”. Obviously, this is a message that needs to be delivered with care but the minister was stretching his case by denouncing the current regime as “muddled, clunky and bureaucratic.” Almost all farm subsidies have been rolled into the single farm payment, an annual cheque calculated simply per hectare of land and comprising 87 per cent of the average Northern Ireland farmer’s income. Compared to most social security benefits, it is as straightforward as a standing order.
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A report into whistleblowing by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority, Northern Ireland’s health regulator, has found NHS staff believe the media has “little role to play in getting concerns dealt with effectively.” According to the report: “a number of media shows and personalities were the subject of particular comment and criticism” from focus groups and “several participants commented on how the media’s agenda of entertainment rarely aligned with the whistleblower’s aim to get problems solved, and that this often resulted in a lack of responsibility and proportionality when handling the issue.”
To whom could this possibly refer?
newton@irishnews.com
