It seems to be generally agreed, except by the DUP publicly anyway, that the deal that never was is the best deal they can get.
Is it the best deal Sinn Féin can get? It better not be. It’s less a deal than a wish list. A lot of it is hot air and piffle. Almost nothing is tied down. Remember Sinn Féin was to conclude these talks on the basis of having existing agreements implemented. Not a single one would have been.
Let’s take a look at the draft agreement as published by Mallie/Rowan. Paragraph 1.2. ‘The UK government shall legislate to amend the NI Act 1998 to extend the time for the election of First and deputy First Minister after an assembly election…’. When?
Par. 1.3. ‘A Coalition Management Committee will be established.’ Its job would be to flag up ‘issues’ through an early warning system. One of this committee’s tasks, (apart from subverting some of the work of assembly committees) would be to ‘avoid surprises’. What? Define a surprise. You can just see a member of this ridiculous forum being asked why s/he didn’t flag up some ‘surprise’. Answer: ‘oh but I didn’t think it was a surprise. It didn’t surprise me.’ All executive business it seems would have to go through this mini-executive before it reached the executive.
On the petition of concern nothing. An ad hoc committee to look at reviewing the petition of concern by June this year. Praise be; a date. Then what? Legislation? No mention.
Wait till you hear this one. Par. 1.10. ‘Parties agree that all aspects of this agreement will be implemented in a proportionate and prudent way.’ What on earth does that mean? Who will decide what’s either proportionate or prudent? This is nonsense folks.
Then we come to the stunning 1.11 in which Sinn Féin agrees to the allocation of funding of the DUP-Tory priorities in the confidence and supply agreement. That includes of course the imbalance in favour of Belfast and east of the Bann infrastructure. Yes, it’s true there’d be no real chance of altering a signed agreement between the Conservatives and DUP but a Stormont executive would have to implement it so there was no need to agree to its priorities.
Irish language legislation has still to be drafted so what are in the draft agreement are broad principles only. Sinn Féin have been shafted before when they thought they’d got a deal only to find the act embodying the deal didn’t include the deal. That happened in 2007 on guess what, the Irish language.
Oh, and the DUP have a veto on role of the Irish language commissioner. (Par 2.3 (iii)). Everything has to be approved by the First and deputy First Minister including guidance given to the commissioner.
On human rights, another ad hoc committee to consider the ‘creation’ of a Bill of Rights which will report on the twelfth of never. Sure after twenty years what does a date matter? There’s a lovely section on Rights and Respect which contains more nostrums, pieties and sanctimonious claptrap than you could find in an American encyclopaedia on motherhood and apple pie but not a word on how to enforce any of the virtuosity extolled.
Luckily Sinn Féin don’t have to defend anything in this draft agreement because Arlene Foster couldn’t sell it on February 12, got cold, not to say hyperborean feet and sent out Simon Hamilton, one of the DUP negotiating team to deny his negotiation was unacceptable to the party. Huh.
As for Sinn Féin, at least they have cleared up any ambivalence about wanting to return to Stormont. The mantra for thirteen months was ‘no return to the status quo’. This agreement was the status quo with promises of future good behaviour, future but undrafted legislation and respect for diversity, oh yes and maybe the justice portfolio in 2022.
And the side deal on legacy Gerry Kelly was adamant about? Produce the document or give it to Eamonn Mallie. As Sam Goldwyn famously said: ‘A verbal contract ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.’
As for the written draft agreement, the obvious question is, apple pie is one thing but where’s the beef?
