Opinion

Newton Emerson: Could agreement be scuppered by Ulster-Scots?

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.

Irish speakers gathered at Stormont calling for an Irish Language Act earlier this year. Picture by Mal McCann
Irish speakers gathered at Stormont calling for an Irish Language Act earlier this year. Picture by Mal McCann Irish speakers gathered at Stormont calling for an Irish Language Act earlier this year. Picture by Mal McCann

One of the UUP’s leadership advisers during the Good Friday Agreement used to say, privately, that Ulster-Scots had been included “as a joke”. It is certainly true it was only included for false symmetry and a lack of pleas not to include it, other than to avoid laughter. Yet could it be the rock on which the agreement founders?

The rapid souring of Stormont talks, due mainly to a DUP dose of the glums, coincides with poll results showing unionist voters are completely unmoved by Arlene Foster’s pitch earlier this month for Ulster-Scots as a counterpart to an Irish language act. There is no Plan B because, as a look through two decades of Stormont’s language debate will attest, Ulster-Scots has always been the default accompaniment to Irish from parties, officials and campaigners - and the DUP has not grasped in time that this time requires a proper answer.

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With DUP representatives claiming direct rule is imminent, an intriguing scenario has been floated by a Sunday newspaper. DUP rules require the party leader to hold elected office, so if Stormont is suspended Arlene Foster could have to step down. A DUP source was quoted saying this might be no bad thing. MLAs remained technically in office throughout the five years of direct rule from 2002 and a similar fudge would certainly apply again. Still, the speculation highlights how sidelined Foster will be if Stormont is formally mothballed.

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In January, when Sinn Féin minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir belatedly set up an RHI inquiry, he expressed the hope it would take six months. The assembly passed an SDLP motion agreeing this was a reasonable time frame. Nine months later, inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin has delayed the first public evidence session again, until the end of November, having already amassed 880,000 pages of evidence. It is now transparently obvious the inquiry will take the rest of the decade, if not longer - not that this was unclear from the start, as all public inquiries are the same. A quicker route to authoritative answers is required in general but in this particular instance, has one ever been necessary? RHI was first exposed in a detailed and damning 2016 report from the Audit Office, completed in a matter of months. The inquiry’s eventual conclusions are unlikely to be much different.

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The Department of Infrastructure is to commence work on the A6 dual-carriageway after an environmentalist lost a case at the Court of Appeal. This is not unlike last week’s story about the Mallusk incinerator, which is to proceed after a ruling from the Planning Appeals Commission. So why are politicians not screeching again about civil servants “taking decisions”? Both cases involve officials at the same department enacting a policy direction left by their last minister. Righteous indignation about the principles of accountability seems to come down to disagreeing with the outcome.

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Running the government on autopilot appears to be testing the civil service, as absenteeism levels have risen from their already extraordinary level to a 10-year high of 12.4 days a year. Although stress is reportedly the main factor, almost exactly half of staff take no sick days at all - a figure whose consistency year after year suggests pushing paper around Stormont is hardly an inevitable health risk.

Public sector union Nipsa blames rising absenteeism on the Fresh Start agreement’s voluntary redundancy package.

“Those remaining have to do their own jobs and that of the 3,000 people who went out the door,” claimed Nipsa deputy general comrade Bumper Graham.

They also have to do the jobs of everyone who keeps calling in sick, of course, but he did not mention that.

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A lesson from our past has unfortunately escaped the Spanish government. Faced with an unlawful Catalan independence referendum, Madrid is aggressively trying to prevent it and making matters infinitely worse. What it could have done is followed the example of nationalist parties in Northern Ireland in 1973, who advised supporters to simply boycott the border poll held in that year, turning its 99 per cent pro-union result into a joke of Soviet election proportions - and that was despite those unionist votes representing a clear majority of the electorate. Catalan’s separatist parties were in the minority in the last regional election two years ago. Now any result they get will be a victory.

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Losing all your elected representatives except your north Down leader has traditionally been the preserve of the golf club wing of unionism. Now the Green Party in Northern Ireland is having a swing at it. Deputy leader Clare Bailey has suddenly stepped down after three years - as big a surprise as her election to the assembly last year. In 2016, Belfast’s first Green councillor Ross Brown suddenly quit the party altogether after two high-profile years in post. He had also worked in leader Steven Agnew’s office.

In 2011, the Green’s first councillor and MLA in Northern Ireland, Brian Wilson, left the party to run against Agnew, his former research assistant, as an independent.

newton@irishnews.com