Opinion

Newton Emerson: Stormont's agreement over lockdown exit is an impressive political achievement

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.

First minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Stormont before announcing the executive's coronavirus recovery plan. Picture by Liam McBurney, Press Association
First minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Stormont before announcing the executive's coronavirus recovery plan. Picture by Liam McBurney, Press Association First minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Stormont before announcing the executive's coronavirus recovery plan. Picture by Liam McBurney, Press Association

Stormont has agreed a lockdown exit plan and the DUP and Sinn Féin have stood over it hand in hand, despite all the pressures to turn it into a British versus Irish issue. As a political achievement, it is as impressive as any peace process landmark.

The absence of dates might be a guarantee of science-based objectivity or a fudge to allow positioning between London and Dublin but much debate on this question is overblown, as nowhere is going to lift lockdown based solely on the calendar.

The real problem with Stormont’s plan is that it ends with only a partial reopening of schools and contains no mention of nurseries, child-minders, grandparents caring for children or childcare of any description. Large parts of the workforce will be unavailable to reopen anything and will suffer loss of earnings and jobs as employers struggle to resume business.

It is a mystery how an administration bound up with equality duties can so disastrously overlook parents and, in practice, women - both equality categories. Perhaps keeping flags off the policy was felt to be accomplishment enough.

**

Increased testing is an important part of the Stormont plan but quality of testing might also need improvement. Northern Ireland is unusual in requiring self-swabbing in most test settings, including drive-through centres. Swabbing is tricky and unpleasant - and risky for health workers - but test centres in Britain and the Republic have been staffed and equipped to cope. Here, you are handed a comically long cotton bud through your car window.

The Public Health Agency says: “International peer-reviewed evidence suggests that self-swabbing is just as effective at securing a valid sample as clinician-administered testing.”

A review of the latest international research, published in this week’s New Scientist, finds self-swabbing is “relatively effective” but still misses around 10 per cent of positive cases.

**

Electric bicycles have finally been legalised in Northern Ireland, four years after the Department for Infrastructure launched a campaign to promote them. It has been widely suggested this will help with a post-lockdown green transport revolution but that is a naive hope. Cyclists and walkers have come out in droves because there are so few cars on the roads. Once people start returning to work, there could be even more cars than before as social distancing slashes capacity on buses and trains. Although only about five per cent of all journeys in Northern Ireland are made by public transport, most of this is focused on Belfast, where vehicle traffic could increase significantly.

**

Building work on Ulster University’s Belfast campus has continued throughout the lockdown but the epidemic may not leave it unscathed. Because it is much smaller than the Jordanstown campus it is meant to replace, the new campus has been designed around open-plan hot-desking, with few assigned workplaces, let alone offices. This is fashionable nonsense at the best of times and will be completely impractical with social distancing, which could still be in place when the site opens in 2022. Academics who always hated the design now have a powerful argument against it.

**

No sooner has the Emma De Souza case been resolved than another citizenship problem has arisen, this time with the self-employed furlough scheme, which does not recognise Irish passports or Northern Ireland driving licences. Unionist and nationalist politicians have both raised the issue with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which has explained alternative ways to prove eligibility.

There is a growing presumption that passports signify nationality, identity and residency in Northern Ireland, with Irish citizenship actually conferred by the act of applying for one. This must eventually collide with the fact that one fifth of people in Northern Ireland do not hold any passport. How will they be regularised, given that a Northern Ireland identity card might conflict with their identity?

**

The government has confirmed it is expanding border control posts at Northern Ireland’s ports to comply with the EU withdrawal agreements. This has been leapt on by the press media opposition parties as proof Boris Johnson was lying when he said there would be no customs procedures for internal UK trade.

Although the prime minister is an unreliable witness to his own intentions, especially on Brexit, he is being somewhat unfairly maligned in this instance.

‘Border control post’ is a term specifically related to live animals and animal products, the former of which have always required inspection on entering Northern Ireland. Customs facilities are different - and as reports last year revealed, they will be in ports in Britain.

**

Gerry Adams has had his convictions for attempting to escape from internment in the 1970s quashed by the Supreme Court, on the grounds his imprisonment was unlawful, as was presumably the case for everyone else.

The UUP has condemned the ruling, which is most unwise, as it was responsible for introducing the policy of detention without trial. What the party should have said was that internment was so wrong it cannot even be justified against Gerry Adams.