The DUP has been instrumental in unprecedented developments at Westminster, with the government forced to publish its full legal advice on the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement, thanks to the DUP’s ten MPs opposing an amendment the government lost by four votes.
Sinn Féin, with seven MPs, is becoming increasingly tetchy over teasing about its abstentionism, although nobody seriously expects it to turn up in the Commons, not because this would breach some po-faced republican principle but because Sinn Féin wants a hard Brexit.
DUP double standards have not escaped notice either. Demanding the publication of legally privileged advice on the grounds of its political significance stands in stark contrast to the DUP’s record at Stormont, as opponents have lined up to point out. To take one pertinent example, in 2010 DUP finance minister Sammy Wilson - now an MP - repeatedly refused to release the legal advice Stormont had received on first minister Peter Robinson’s return to office after a number of personal and financial controversies, claiming “legal professional opinion” was exempt under the Freedom of Information Act.
Was that not a matter of political significance?
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So farewell then to Northern Ireland’s MEPs. The Irish government is allocating both new seats it is getting in the European Parliament due to Brexit to constituencies inside the Republic, with no northward extension of the franchise.
Sinn Féin had wanted a new northern constituency to be created. Alternatively, Ireland could move to a single constituency for European elections and allow extra-territorial voting for citizens, like most other EU members. Legal advice and precedent indicate all this is possible but Dublin has ruled it out because it would need to change laws and possibly the constitution. But so what? Changing laws is the government’s job and a constitutional referendum is already scheduled for next year to extend presidential voting. It would barely need an extra question to cover European elections.
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The so-called ‘vulture fund’ that purchased Northern Ireland’s distressed Nama assets has filed its annual accounts, indicating it has almost broken even. Promontoria Eagle, the fund set up by US company Cerberus, paid €1.6 billion four years ago for loans valued at €6 billion, giving it the right to recoup them in full or take control of the properties involved. It has now recovered €1.5 billion, so it is all profit from here.
Reports of this have been a reminder that the Nama sale remains the subject of a PSNI and National Crime Agency investigation in Northern Ireland and a judicial inquiry in the Republic. The Public Prosecution Service is still considering a file sent to it earlier this year. We have not heard the last of a story that was the RHI of its day.
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The mystery of what Sinn Féin does with all its US donations has finally been solved. Accounts show Sinn Féin typically raises $400,000 a year in North America but also, implausibly, spends it there. Foreign donations are illegal in the Republic and only legal in Northern Ireland if received from an Irish citizen.
However, it is not illegal to set up a company that receives an overseas loan, even if that loan is never paid back. It has now emerged this is how Sinn Féin has been funding events and offices in the Republic. The party’s US fundraising arm told the Irish Times that loans accruing interest are not financial support, despite no expectation of repayment, and its American paperwork on the matter is in order.
It will be interesting to see if Dublin closes this loophole.
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Like most universities and increasingly parts of the NHS, Ulster University is primarily a means of channelling taxpayer cash towards property developers.
Hence the management horror when Dr Goretti Horgan, a social policy lecturer and leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in Northern Ireland, applied to run for one of the two elected seats on the university’s 15-member governing council, for which all staff are invited to stand.
Horgan was told she was barred as her trade union activity created a “conflict of interest”, although there is no provision for such an exemption in the university’s rules. Management then quickly launched a “review” when threatened with legal action. It beggars belief that a public institution proclaiming its academic excellence in law and human rights could cite trade union activity as a bar to anything, let alone an election. Even its own students would know better.
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The PSNI says it is treating as a “hate incident” a banner placed on a bonfire in Portadown this summer, which read: “Mid Ulster Council Run by IRA Army Council”.
‘Hate incident’ is a widely misunderstood term, meaning an allegation has been made but no crime has been determined. Little wonder officers are proceeding with caution. The last intelligence assessment of Sinn Féin to be made public, produced jointly by the PSNI and MI5 in 2015, found: “IRA members believe the Army Council oversees both Sinn Féin and the IRA with an overarching strategy”.
Was that a hate incident?
newton@irishnews.com
