Opinion

Newton Emerson: Pressure growing from ambitious politicians as their career options narrow

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

The phased reduction of MLAs’ pay due to Stormont’s collapse is meant to apply pressure for its restoration, at least in popular opinion.

Instead, pressure has broken out from an entirely different direction. The Northern Ireland branch of the National Association of Councillors, effectively a trade union, is demanding a review to bring members’ pay and benefits up to Stormont levels because “councillors work just as hard”.

Northern Ireland’s 462 councillors receive a £14,000 annual allowance, about one quarter an MLA’s full pay. Quadrupling their allowance is such an unpopular opinion that several councillors have disowned it and the association has bizarrely claimed it is not saying it wants more money by demanding a review for more money.

But ultimately this is not about money. It is about ambitious entrants to politics watching their career horizons shrink in Stormont’s absence. The effect of that on all parties could end up applying far more pressure than MLA pay cuts.

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Some of the Hooded Men, who suffered inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques during internment in 1971, are seeking damages from the estates and heirs of deceased Westminster and Stormont ministers.

Among those named in the writ is former prime minister Edward Heath, defence and home secretaries in Heath’s cabinet, and former Northern Ireland prime minister Brian Faulkner.

While it will surprise many people to learn the dead can be sued, legislation facilitates this up to 12 years after death and a test case could push the limit further. The real constraint, as demonstrated by posthumous claims against Jimmy Savile, is that even a substantial fortune is quickly swallowed up by legal costs.

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The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) is clearly miffed at the release of a flow-chart designed to guide officials through minister-free decision making.

The hilariously elaborate and jargon-labelled diagram, obtained by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, was “devised by Daera and is solely for the use of Daera”, a department spokesman said.

The Executive Office, formerly the office of the first and deputy first ministers, gave a better explanation of indirect rule when asked for its chart.

“Decision-makers will take legal advice where necessary. Every case must be determined on its own merits, and the nuanced judgment between taking a decision now and awaiting the return of ministers must be made on a case-by-case basis.”

In other words, what will or will not be done is what is least likely to end up in court.

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Businesses in Kilkeel are putting Daera’s flow chart to the test by offering to pay for a study into expanding the town’s harbour. Daera supported an initial business case but says a further £350,000 analysis is required into engineering and environmental issues and “no public expenditure provision exists to cover the costs of these studies”.

Officials have felt moved to add that “in the absence of a minister no decision for such an infrastructure project can be made”, which rather gives the game away. The purpose of ‘studies’ is to provide civil servants with the answer they want. If they are not paying the piper they may not like the tune, so letting someone else pay is out of the question.

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Expect to hear more about AirBnB in the coming year as the online holiday rental site becomes a significant factor in housing supply. Northern Ireland is unique in the UK in requiring AirBnB properties to be registered as tourist accommodation and to meet appropriate standards. Several prosecutions have already taken place. However, this has not deterred a 61 per cent growth in AirBnB properties over the past year in Belfast, with similar figures for Derry and Co Down. The Belfast total is now 2,644, up 1,005 in a year. These figures dwarf new social housing construction, which must fill the gap as private rented properties go out of circulation. In the 12 months to last September, just 858 social housing units were built across the whole of Northern Ireland.

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The PSNI has asked police officers in Britain with riot training to volunteer for Brexit duty in Northern Ireland. The PSNI says such “mutual aid” requests are part of normal annual planning via the National Police Co-Ordination Centre. While that may be true it has been five years since it was last considered necessary, during the 2013 loyalist riots over the Ardoyne parade, when 600 officers were sent from Britain. Reports are suggesting that if mutual aid officers are deployed due to Brexit they will all serve on the border, to enable as many PSNI officers as possible to continue normal duties. Would ‘Brits on the border’ not be taken as a far worse provocation than any initial excuse for trouble?

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Brexit has witnessed an explosion of alleged rights made up on the spot with no known legal basis. A special prize for imagination must go to Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson, who has declared that “Ireland 32” has “a right to control our own supply chain”.

Not only does no such right exist but EU membership heavily curtails the freedom of countries to control their own supply chains, as this is a fundamental aspect of how the customs union and single market work.

Should an MEP not know this?

newton@irishnews.com