Police searching for documents on Loughinisland documentary, No Stone Unturned, seized an entire media organisation’s journalistic material, including sensitive interviews with sex abuse victims, it has emerged.
Fine Point Films, which made the documentary, is a sister company of investigative news website The Detail. Officers purporting to be acting for Durham Constabulary, subcontracted by the PSNI to track information originating from the Police Ombudsman’s office, seized paperwork and computers wholesale from both businesses while acting on a warrant to remove material related to No Stone Unturned.
The company has accused officers of knowingly lifting unrelated material, putting stories and sources at risk. Police say the law entitles them to do this and it would be impractical not to. But the sweeping, chilling threat this poses to journalism cannot be the intention of courts and legislators. At the very least, Northern Ireland’s judiciary should seek media and IT advice on limiting search warrants to the material being sought.
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In her New Year’s message, DUP leader Arlene Foster has vowed to “ensure the backstop is defeated.”
Of course, she has to say this during the Brexit holiday hiatus. But such defiance is consistent with a rumour doing the rounds that Foster is being kept on to take the fall when a Withdrawal Agreement with some form of backstop is passed - still a likelier outcome than not. Resigning on principle in that eventuality would provide her with a nobler exit than hanging on until the RHI inquiry reports, as well as giving the DUP good time to prepare for May’s council elections and the August legal deadline for a Stormont deal. If so, nothing would become Foster’s leadership like the leaving of it.
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The PSNI has released its disciplinary statistics to the Sunday Life, revealing that 60 officers faced serious sanction over the past year - unfortunate if acceptable in a workforce of 6,600. One curiosity in the figures is that the PSNI distinguishes between sacking people and requiring them to resign. It must have heard the Arlene Foster rumour too.
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Sinn Féin has decided to set up anti-eviction campaign groups across the Republic to capitalise on recent events in Roscommon. This is a political accident waiting to happen. The republican movement, for want of a better term, is known to be heavily invested in the residential property business across Ireland. Are all its tenants and creditors now immune from debt enforcement? Sinn Féin now looks doubly exposed in Northern Ireland to the bedroom tax, which it promised to mitigate then voted to introduce. Most people will be too fearful to stand up to a landlord or lender with republican connections but that will only make the inevitable scandal worse when it occurs.
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The usual Christmas story about prisoners misbehaving on temporary release has been pre-empted by Brendan McGuigan, the Criminal Justice Inspector for Northern Ireland. In an interesting and challenging statement, McGuigan pointed out that persistent reoffending ceases with age and almost all prisoners must eventually be accepted back into society.
This is very true - while no effective form of rehabilitation has yet been discovered even persistent recidivists tend to grow out of crime by the age of 30, so there is little point keeping them in prison thereafter, apart from providing justice to their victims.
However, that argument cuts both ways. Once a pattern of repeat offending has been identified, criminals might as well be kept in prison until they are 30, perhaps using milder forms of American-style ‘three strikes and you’re out’ laws.
Perhaps the inspector will suggest that next Christmas.
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How indirect rule works, example 492: the permanent secretary at the Department of Education is taking legal advice on allocating extra school places for next September without a minister. In normal times, funding is moved around to meet unanticipated need. Civil servants stepped in last May when secondary schools in Bangor were oversubscribed and 40 pupils faced travelling to Newtownards and Portaferry. Similar scenarios are once again on the cards and officials clearly have little confidence that the law on taking decisions without ministers, rushed through Westminster in October, will protect them. In practice, the advice to civil servants remains the same as it has been since Stormont collapsed - they must judge what action, or inaction, is least likely to provoke a legal challenge, as indirect rule cannot survive any contact with the courts.
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Some bin lorry crews in Belfast took unofficial industrial action last Sunday, when collections due on Boxing Day had been rescheduled, apparently because they believed Sunday and Christmas overtime rates should be combined. A statement from Belfast City Council indicates it intends to come down hard on those involved, which could end up looking excessive, considering how much cash it will splurge on more questionable causes. If householders had dragged their bins into the middle of the road and threatened to set them on fire, no expense would have been spared to find contractors to deal with it.
newton@irishnews.com
