Opinion

Newton Emerson: Mystery over Sinn Féin's objection to a military amnesty

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Newton Emerson
Newton Emerson Newton Emerson

You wait ages for a budget and then two come along at once. Following last week’s indirectly-ruled Stormont budget, chancellor Philip Hammond’s Westminster budget means another £660 million for Northern Ireland over the next four years. Only a fifth of this is for day-to-day spending but together with the DUP-Tory deal it is enough to ensure no overall real term cut for the next two years and negligible reductions thereafter, as long as ministers are in place to allocate it, most notably on public sector pay. The rest of Hammond’s cash is earmarked for public-private infrastructure contracts. This could make a huge contribution to the economy, although civil servants will struggle to use a penny of it without executive direction. So much for ‘Tory austerity’ - and all Sinn Féin and the DUP have to do is find an English synonym for “standalone” when legislating for Irish and Ulster-Scots. In other words, we are just waiting for two language acts to come along at once.

**

In a complication the Stormont talks do not need, Sinn Féin has revealed the British government is consulting on a Troubles amnesty for the security forces. There is widespread opposition to this, including from many unionists and the Irish government. However, Sinn Féin’s objection is a mystery. It acceded to exactly this amnesty at the 2001 Weston Park talks, as a quid pro quo for dealing with IRA on-the-runs. The deal was to be enacted via the 2005 Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill, put through Westminster by former secretary of state Peter Hain. Sinn Féin backed the bill until the SDLP embarrassed it into a U-turn, forcing the bill’s last-minute withdrawal - yet the on-the-runs scheme continued. To put in current Sinn Féin terms, the security force amnesty it agreed to is an outstanding commitment.

**

While Sinn Féin’s move on abortion is aimed at the southern electorate, it has a northern dimension. There is only so often Michelle O’Neill can demand “rights enjoyed by everyone else on these islands” before forcing women to go to the other island becomes a liability. Discipline should keep Sinn Féin’s northern conservatives in line and it is particularly risible to see that faction represented by former deputy speaker Francie Molloy. At the time of the Good Friday Agreement, he sold the peace process to militant republicans by claiming that if it did not deliver a united Ireland in 20 years, they could “go back to what we do best”. Was that not a threat to generations yet unborn?

**

Among the revelations already emerging from the RHI inquiry is that public sector use of consultants is pointless. Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) was paid £100,000 by Stormont to advise it on design of the heating scheme. Its 2012 report included the original blunder on tariffs, believed to be due to a simple cut and paste mistake. This was discovered by last year’s Audit Office investigation, before which CEPA admitted an “error - but we won’t call it that.” Now the inquiry has discovered that CEPA’s defence, once the mistake came to light, was that civil servants should have spotted it because they were “the experts”. Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin was incredulous, as the supposed point of hiring consultants is to bring in expertise.

In fact, it is much worse than that. The real point of hiring consultants, whose reports are rarely more than a cut and paste job civil servants could do themselves, is to cover official backsides when things go wrong. CEPA has shattered that unspoken understanding.

**

There has been rash speculation after two fires in a derelict building in Belfast’s Royal Exchange redevelopment zone, close to where the North Street Arcade was purposefully burned down in 2004.

Such speculation is premature. Old buildings are often set ablaze through wanton vandalism alone and there are any number of reasons why they might catch fire accidentally. Suspicions are only warranted when the fire brigade establish arson has occurred, then the police fail to properly investigate it - as happened at North Street Arcade.

**

In a competitive field, this week’s threat to the peace process award goes to Lady Sylvia Hermon. During a Commons debate on withdrawal from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the independent north Down unionist MP claimed this would breach the Good Friday Agreement by leaving Northern Ireland without equivalent rights protections to the Republic. It fell to other MPs, including the solicitor general, to gently remind Lady Sylvia that the 1998 agreement obviously contains no mention of the 2007 charter - and that in any case the charter only applies to EU institutions and laws. People were scundered for her, as they don’t say in Cultra.

**

The coalition Angela Merkel has spent the past two months trying and failing to put together has come to be referred to in Germany as ‘Jamaica’ because the colours of the three parties involved make up the Jamaican flag.

Extending this to Stormont, where the DUP and Sinn Féin are presumed to have lined up Alliance for the Department of Justice, would give us blue, orange and green - or ‘Rwanda’.

newton@irishnews.com