Opinion

Newton Emerson: Fortunate that Primark building's fate is not in Stormont's hands

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

As soon as Belfast’s Primark burned down, dark wits suggested Stormont as an alternative location. Fortunately, the gutted landmark’s salvation lies in Belfast City Hall, as ordering the restoration of listed buildings is primarily a council power.

Restoration work will require fresh permission from Stormont’s Planning Service but that is not usually the kind of permission a minister has to sign off. Enforcement action can ultimately fall to Stormont agencies. However, it is inconceivable a company like Primark would ignore a council order. Primark is unlikely to require more than council guidance - it has been praised this week by the Ulster Architectural Heritage society for its “heritage commitment” to Belfast.

All of which is just as well, because a 2011 report from the Audit Office found that even when Stormont is working, its enforcement of listed building protection is ineffective, despite years of other reports calling for it to improve.

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People who still want Stormont back held ‘We Want Better’ rallies on Tuesday, the Belgium-beating 589th day without devolution.

The DUP held its own protest at Stormont, standing behind a banner proclaiming “Sinn Féin - end your boycott”.

This was uncharacteristic behaviour from the unionist party. It looked like a Sinn Féin-style attempt to muscle in on a public protest, with even the words “Sinn Féin” on the banner prominent in news footage - a rookie PR mistake.

An odd sense of the DUP fumbling its message - after all, it has been effectively boycotting Stormont since February’s draft deal - was underscored when Arlene Foster was asked why nobody from her party had met the Pope.

Repeatedly trying to dodge that question, the DUP leader cut off her deputy Nigel Dodds, talked over reporters and ended up snapping: “That’s not the way the DUP operates and well you know it.”

The petulance of this remark and its delivery were extraordinary. Has Foster learned nothing from the past two years?

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Sinn Féin is suffering distractions from its own message as the Hightown incinerator ruling begins impacting on its pet projects. With civil servants now refusing to take ministerial-level decisions, a GAA official has said it may need to rethink Casement Park. A new legal challenge to the A5 dual-carriageway is about to be heard and a taxi trial has been deferred in Belfast’s bus lanes, with officials at the Department for Infrastructure citing the Hightown ruling.

Although the taxi trial certainly should be cancelled, it is debatable if the Hightown ruling means it needs to be cancelled. But that debate now has Sinn Féin over a barrel. It lobbied for the taxi trial, designed the Glider system, supported the Hightown ruling and blocked the original North Foreshore incinerator. Trying to have it both ways on everything has finally run out of road.

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With the RHI inquiry about to resume - and call juicy DUP witnesses - Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy has warned of “explosive” evidence in the next few weeks. The party has also responded to a consultation exercise by calling for the RHI scheme to be shut down.

This is not as straightforward a case as it might seem of republicans stirring the pot. Although Sinn Féin has stopped calling for Arlene Foster to stand aside as a prospective first minister, it still hopes she will and sees the RHI inquiry as the only reason she might. Ironically, this is a sign that Sinn Féin genuinely wants the Stormont pot to simmer down.

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Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council has banned its facilities from being used for “the glorification of terrorism”, after it emerged it had funded a festival named after IRA member Mairead Farrell. A UUP motion for the ban passed due to the SDLP abstaining, while Sinn Féin voted against. Had the motion failed it would have created a legal quandary because glorifying terrorism, whether in the past, present or future, was infamously made a serious criminal offence by the Terrorism Act 2006, punishable by up to seven years in prison. The definition of glorification includes “any form of praise or celebration”.

The implications of this for Northern Ireland are so endless that everyone simply pretends it does not exist.

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UDA boss Dee Stitt has been ruled “not a fit and proper person” to be a charity trustee by the Charity Commission.

The issue of his fitness and propriety arose after a community group he is involved with reconstituted under charitable status.

Questions are now being asked about how Stitt retains his chief executive role at Charter NI, also a registered charity, although funded by the taxpayer - like most such ‘charities’ in Northern Ireland.

This is another issue whose implications are too endless to be confronted. Broad legal requirements to be a fit and proper person or a person of good character are legion across the public, private and third sectors, applying to everything from directing a company to renewing a liquor licence. Few people ‘known to police’ would normally qualify. If these rules were enforced, the peace process would collapse.

newton@irishnews.com