Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Nationalists know holding Dublin's attention is a century-old problem

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

How to hold the attention of a Dublin government? For northern nationalists the problem is more than a century old, although twenty years ago some hoped the Good Friday Agreement had solved it.

But the level playing field some thought the agreement had established turned out to be a platform on boggy ground, prone, without Dublin correction, to tilt back towards unionism.

Brexit negotiation has kept a kind of Dublin focus on northern politics against the grain of southern understanding, and interest, post the GFA and prior to the UK’s Leave vote.

To lay out official southern attitudes phase by phase is demoralising.

It makes sense as realism amid the emptiness of conventional wisdom. As in recitation of the maxim that nationalists surely cannot want Westminster direct rule, therefore Sinn Féin ought to somehow present the DUP with a deal even more favourable to unionism and even less impressive to nationalists than the last one, on which the Arlene Foster leadership reneged.

As in the willingness to ignore last week’s judgment against Foster, which leaves her liable for court costs and means that the May government through Karen Bradley should now fund inquests the DUP leader decided should be blocked. Acting unlawfully in her role as first minister, said the judge.

At the weekend Foster told her party’s spring conference that Sinn Féin had caused the present political vacuum by ‘sowing division.’

Instead of amusement at a DUP leader calling another party divisive, this was reported as the DUP leader ‘ripping into’ Sinn Féin and as Foster ‘clashing’ with SF leader Mary Lou McDonald. But there are no headlines in the unchanging daily story that Sinn Féin are stuck, without the dogged personability of Martin McGuinness to cover their embarrassment. Or that the DUP will not work power-sharing.

DUP failings fail to exercise official Dublin. That court case? No resonance. The RHI inquiry grinds out evidence of civil service incompetence, plus deference to DUP and perhaps Sinn Féin dislike of minuted meetings. DUP connections to UDA North Down figure Dee Stitt? Boring, or too small scale for Dublin notice.

Doyen of Dublin commentary Fintan O’Toole does keep coming back to the trail of DUP dark money, as part of the investigation of the Brexit-Leave funding. DUP involvement makes the cut because of Brexit.

Much as Dublin decided Sinn Féin were good enough for unionists to share Stormont power with, though not good enough for a similar role in southern government, a dislikeable DUP is not to be dissed as unionist standard-bearers.

None of this is mysterious.

The Republic is another Ireland with its own problems. Sinn Féin as heir to the IRA is as much as many can bear to know.

Plainly, there is no alternative to the DUP as the unionist voice. Even in the north few displayed interest in the other weekend speech from a party leader, despite admiration for the resilience and mental toughness of Alliance’s Naomi Long.

The Alliance idea of how to ‘break the logjam’ mostly caught the eye as the party re-positioning itself to be all things to the slender middle of northern politics, in vain.

After earlier misfires it now has a defensible stance on Irish, indeed the model for the draft agreement with Sinn Féin ditched by Foster. Urging Westminster to take care of Irish as well as single sex marriage is a wheeze a Northern Ireland Office minder might go for at a different time.

But its likelihood depends entirely on what the DUP tell Karen Bradley they will stand over.

Even if it only means shrugging at the gimmick of Westminster taking their difficult decisions, will the Foster leadership stand up to Jim Allister, who said a while back that he saw this coming?

And Alliance ducked the question of abortion provision.

The party may imagine itself competing for the hearts and minds of civic unionism. Nobody is vying for the honour. But even if Alliance weren’t internally divided on abortion, championing Irish provision is more than radical enough for them. Reducing the number of days that Belfast City Hall flies the union flag – even though that left it on a par with Britain - brought them an unmerciful pasting because they lined out with nationalism.

As for MLA scrutiny committees parallel to talks, SF’s McDonald saw through the DUP’s ramped-up version of Alliance’s elaborately balanced one to a ‘retreat from power-sharing’.

Alliance is a trier. But it is no alternative to the dreary steeples for northerners, nor for alienated Dublin.