Opinion

Newton Emerson: We should not be naive about policy of paying paramilitaries to behave

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.

Does cash help paramilitaries to ‘transition’?
Does cash help paramilitaries to ‘transition’? Does cash help paramilitaries to ‘transition’?

The SDLP has long described Stormont’s Social Investment Fund as a “paramilitary slush fund”. Concerns are now being voiced about a stitch-up of community funding at Belfast City Council. The UUP calls it “pork-barrel politics.”

Alliance calls it “a carve up of ratepayers money by Sinn Féin and the DUP to give money to their handpicked organisations.”

There are serious legal and financial questions to answer but let us not be naïve. Paying Danegeld has always been intrinsic to the peace process. If Belfast City Council is operating a paramilitary slush fund the key question is whether it helps paramilitaries to ‘transition’ - still officially a legitimate aim - and if so, how can this be made more measurable and transparent?

If the council is not bribing gangsters to behave but merely handing unaccountable grants to the well-connected, then in a perverse way that is actually worse.

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In a further example of how dodgy political funding is a matter of perspective, Secretary of State Karen Bradley has passed another Stormont budget bill through Westminster.

Last September, when her predecessor James Brokenshire first contemplated such a step, it dominated headlines for weeks and was considered such a declaration of direct rule he had to downplay it with the phrase “glide path to direct rule”.

This week’s intervention, extraordinarily, has merited only one dry press release from the Northern Ireland Office.

Direct rule has now landed - the captain is just refusing to switch off the seat belt sign.

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The sun is shining and outreach is in the air, except at the Grand Lodge of Ireland, which will not be meeting Mary Lou McDonald and has warned Arlene Foster not to agree an Irish language act.

Unionism has never passed the test of defying the brethren and it seems particularly ill-led to do so now. Foster should really meet McDonald, for advice on leaving hardliners behind. Sinn Fein is delivering a master-class in movement over the new Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Although Sinn Féin blames Harris for the arrest of Gerry Adams four years ago and tried to block him becoming PSNI deputy chief constable as a result, the party initially welcomed Harris’s southern appointment with a bland statement. It only added reservations after rumblings from the republican base, while clearly pulling its punches enough to reach back out once the rumbling subsides. With a southern election perhaps imminent, even Adams is not too important to move beyond - or to appear to move beyond, at any rate.

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A BBC Spotlight investigation into the DUP and Brexit ‘dark money’ has followed a dubious trail all the way to Kiev, already known for its hot chicken, despite no link to RHI (yet).

None of this seems to have alarmed the DUP and little wonder - such revelations and worse are priced into our political system.

Donald Trump famously said “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

In Northern Ireland, some politicians can say that for a fact.

The challenge of what might frighten the DUP has been unwittingly answered by the party itself, with its £1,000 fine to representatives who give unauthorised media interviews.

So there you have it. The DUP is scared of fines.

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Officials at the Department for Infrastructure are appealing last month’s ruling that they had no power in the absence of a minister to approve the Mallusk incinerator.

Their argument is that in Northern Ireland, uniquely in the UK, executive authority is vested in departments rather than in ministers - a quirk dating back to partition, when the status of the new state’s governance was unclear.

It seems fantastically arcane to rely on this ancient if accurate history when Sinn Féin’s Chris Hazzard, the last infrastructure minister, left instructions to respect the verdict of the Planning Appeals Commission - which approved the incinerator.

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Former Sinn Féin speaker Mitchel McLaughlin has delivered his professorial lecture at Queen’s University Belfast, following on from his fellow honorary professor Peter Robinson.

McLaughlin proposed gauging preference for Irish unity with a question in the next census - an intriguing idea, although most unlikely to happen.

This distracted from his other proposal, which deserved more attention. McLaughlin called for a Troubles memorial modelled on Washington’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which lists the names of all the dead on a wall. The Washington memorial was commissioned and paid for by a Veterans charity, with no official assistance and even some government obstruction.

Why can similar initiative not be shown here?

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McLaughlin’s census suggestion was at least timely. The judicial review into how a border poll should be called, brought by victims campaigner Raymond McCord, has been thrown out in no uncertain terms.

Judge Sir Paul Girvan said he was “wholly unpersuaded” it was his job to bind the secretary of state to a policy on such a sensitive matter.

This is a reminder, also timely, of how reluctant the courts are to intervene in political decisions. The hopes increasingly placed in them to clear up political chaos are doomed to be disappointed.

newton@irishnews.com

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