Opinion

Newton Emerson: Inclusion of smaller parties will shed some light on talks process

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.

SDLP: Entitled to place in any executive. Picture by Hugh Russell
SDLP: Entitled to place in any executive. Picture by Hugh Russell SDLP: Entitled to place in any executive. Picture by Hugh Russell

Is there anything to be said for another round of Stormont talks?

Rustling in the undergrowth over the past few weeks suggests progress is expected but whatever happens, at least this time we will find out. The inclusion of all five main parties should ensure a running commentary of leaks, shattering the Sinn Féin and DUP omerta that has concealed all detail on negotiations to date. The presence of the smaller parties is also a reminder that the SDLP and UUP are entitled to be in any new executive, while the fudged arrangement for appointing a justice minister mean Alliance really has to be in the room when a deal is done.

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Away from Stormont, big thoughts are clearly being had on other peace process structures. Speaking at last weekend’s Killarney Economic Summit, Arlene Foster proposed maximising the potential of the British-Irish Council. Categorised as one of the Good Friday Agreement’s ‘east west bodies’, it is in fact the east-west-north-south body, hence its initially suggested title of Council of the Isles. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin also referenced the council’s potential in a speech last September, as many reports noted. What was missed was that he proposed this as part of a new “British-Irish Agreement”, which is how the Good Friday Agreement is referred to as a treaty. Before anyone gets too carried away with east-west-north-southery they should credit the idea to its original proponent, the Monster Raving Loony Party. It once suggested a body called the WISE Islands (Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England.)

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In further big thinking, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told the European Parliament he expects a majority of people in Northern Ireland to remain EU citizens after Brexit due to their “unique status” as dual British and Irish citizens. Varadkar’s implication is that a majority here will take up Irish passports, which is quite a prediction. At the 2011 census, excluding the overseas-born population, 59 per cent of Northern Ireland residents held a UK passport, 20 per cent held an Irish passport and 2 per cent held both. The surge in Irish passport applications after the EU referendum has been 14,000 per year above normal renewals - or 0.8 per cent of the population.

So there is no prospect of an EU citizen majority here upon Brexit, even permitting a lengthy transition deal. The real implication of Varadkar’s remarks is that he was needling the DUP.

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Leaked proposals from the Boundary Commission are much less disadvantageous to the DUP than the previous set of proposals - although it remains the only party that would definitely lose a seat. Sinn Féin responded within hours, with accusations of “gerrymandering” and of attempts to “subvert” the boundary review process “via the DUP-Tory pact”. The actual process of the review involves eight independent commissioners with a legal requirement to keep constituencies of roughly equal size, drawing shapes on the map then moving council wards in and out around the edges following public consultations on local sensibilities.

Sinn Féin was the only party not to make a submission to the last consultation, which ran for a month from last September. Could it not have responded to that within hours? It is almost as if republicans would rather stir the pot than do some work.

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The executive, when it is running, performs three annual mini-budgets to reallocate unspent funds. Known as monitoring rounds, they occur in June, October and January. When former secretary of state James Brokenshire had to perform the first one in Stormont’s absence last year, which he eventually managed in July, it caused a mini constitutional crisis. The October round sparked a row over health funding and the politicisation of the civil service. This week, the January round took place without a hint of controversy or so much as a word from the new secretary of state.

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No sooner had Barry McElduff announced his resignation than unionists switched to demanding the head of Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Sinn Féin’s former finance minister, for retweeting McElduff’s video.

This demand is excessive opportunism and certainly qualifies as using victims to “poke each other’s eyes out” - something Kingsmill survivor Alan Black has asked politicians not to do.

Still, the low bar of career-threatening shop stunts is one Ó Muilleoir set himself. In 2009, he complained he could not find sliced turkey in his local Asda without a union flag on the packaging. When the staff member he approached asked, not surprisingly, “are you serious?”, Ó Muilleoir wrote it all up in a furious blog, which must have caused the blameless employee considerable alarm.

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Legal action has concluded against former board members of the Northern Ireland Events Company, which collapsed in 2007 with debts of £1.5 million in what the Audit Office described at the time as the worst accounting failure since devolution. A six year inquiry followed, finally leading this week to directors accepting disqualifications.

If the RHI scandal takes the same length of time to sort out, it will all be over by 2027. Or if it is proportionate to cost, by 7149AD.

newton@irishnews.com