For reasons too obvious to explain, it will be important to pretend the murder of Kevin McGuigan in Belfast’s Short Strand was not carried out by the Provisional IRA. The authorities have had recent practice in this mere yards away, after pretending the 2013 shooting of Jemma McGrath was not carried out by the UVF - an attempted murder so blatant that not solving it required police to ignore the crime scene for two months. A matching service for the Provos would only be fair. The main equality concern at this point is whether pretending the IRA does not exist makes pretending it has not murdered someone seem more or less ridiculous.
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‘Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ has been a key disciplining principle of negotiations in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement - as it has been throughout the world for decades. Yet there are growing calls from republicans and nationalists, backed by UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, to enact the victims section of the Stormont House agreement despite the continuing disagreement over welfare reform. This risks sending such a signal of ill-discipline that it would be difficult to agree anything, let alone everything, again. The distinguishing feature of the Stormont House agreement - supposedly making it more responsible than previous packages - is that it is all financially interlocking and was negotiated on that basis. There could be no worse deal to cherry pick apart.
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Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein have suddenly taken to insulting each other, between speculation on getting into bed together, in the manner of a bad romantic comedy. This has convinced the Dublin media an election is imminent and whether or not that is correct, it is bad news for a welfare reform resolution. Stormont runs out of money at the end of October. An Irish general election, if it is to happen this year, will probably be called before the clocks go back on October 25 so that dark evenings do not affect voting and canvassing (a lesson burned into the Dail’s memory by polls in November 1992 and December 1994.) However, even if the Irish government lingers until next March as planned, election fever is now in the southern air, making Sinn Fein’s northern position that much harder to shift. Unless a deal is struck quickly in September - as Martin McGuinness has hinted - it is unlikely to be done before the Stormont election next May.
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In the same Belfast Telegraph interview where he hinted at a September deal, Martin McGuinness said he has “never put a date” on a united Ireland. This was a fairly audacious claim, given that he is on record repeatedly promising a united Ireland by 2016. Several of those predictions received significant media coverage, notably McGuinness’s statement nine days before the 2003 assembly election that: “Gerry Adams has said 2016 and I think that is achievable.” Of course, Adams says a lot of things that Martin has to go along with.
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The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has reported paramilitary assaults on children to the United Nations. Unfortunately, it diluted the impact of this by reporting 29 other alleged human rights abuses, most of which were a bit of a stretch. Calling for an end to academic selection ignored the fact that Stormont has already ended it and only a private form remains - which is supported by the right to parental choice in education. No other statutory rights are infringed. Calling for a ban on smacking ignores the fact that it is already illegal and only judicial independence remains. Would removing that not lead to injustice? It is noticeable that this last call follows an identical one by the Children’s Commissioner three months ago. Perhaps, as in the south, all these commissions should be merged.
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A DUP cannonball has unmistakably whizzed over the bow of the commissioners after Lord Morrow asked why parents of rioting children are never charged with neglect. By demanding an “active role” from the Children’s Commissioner and timing his announcement to coincide with the Human Rights Commission’s UN report, there can be little doubt that the DUP MLA has spied a liberal loophole for conservative action. It may all seem like nonsense, as criminal neglect is a pattern that must be established over years and the Children’s Commissioner has nothing to do with it regardless. However, defining prostitution as ‘human trafficking’ was nonsense as well and Lord Morrow slipped a conservative law through that liberal loophole without lots of clever people even noticing.
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Two weeks after telling Boal Airport Parking to shut, the Planning Appeals Commission has told a farmer he can open a private car park at Dunluce Castle, which already has a public car park. Strangely, there is no mention in the appeal ruling of the new car park meeting an identifiable need in a transport plan. As that was the point on which Boal’s appeal fell, airport car parks must be different to tourist amenity car parks for some unexplained reason.
newton@irishnews.com
