The government has unveiled its post-Brexit immigration system, with the originally-proposed minimum salary threshold of £30,000 cut to £20,480 and no threshold for seasonal agricultural workers.
However, it has not accepted the Migration Advisory Council’s recommendation for Northern Ireland to have a lower minimum than the rest of the UK, causing horror in the business community and across the political spectrum.
Since the EU referendum, numerous Brexit issues have been presented as calamitous for Northern Ireland, yet so far all have turned out to be manageable or trivial.
Could a hard border for migrant workers be what finally brings Brexit to crisis point?
The only thing certain at this stage is that there will be winners, losers and unexpected consequences. A new floor, ceiling and door is being placed on the labour market, at a time of technical full employment, with effects that will ripple out to everyone. It is bound to have at least as profound an impact on our economy and society as the EU immigration that took off two decades ago, with just as little forward planning or public consultation.
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Nobody at Stormont’s economy committee knew what to say after DUP economy minister Diane Dodds, formerly of the European Parliament and an ardent Brexiteer, paid fulsome tribute to EU funding.
“A huge amount of money comes into Northern Ireland through EU funds,” she said, before going on at length to cite examples “close to my heart” that she would “really like us being able to be part of whatever comes”.
DUP committee member Gordon Dunne, whose question on research and development funding triggered this euro-nostalgia, could only manage to respond with a simple “thanks.”
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The semi-legal nature of the republican movement continues to undermine politics and the law. PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne has been ridiculed after saying he cannot comment on “the status of the Provisional IRA”, then deflecting questions to the NIO. Justice minister Naomi Long was dragged into confirming Byrne’s stance. Although it is the NIO’s job to rule on proscribed organisations, such rulings are made on police assessments and there is no bar on making these public, as the PSNI did regarding the IRA as recently as last November. The new level of absurdity we have entered will only deepen as the PSNI comments on proscribed loyalist and dissident groups. This needs to be resolved, one way or another.
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A specific example of how republican duality continues to spread poison is Conor Murphy’s refusal to say IRA murder victim Paul Quinn was not a criminal - a statement of fact the Sinn Féin finance minister should have no problem making.
During the Republic’s general election, the media and other parties were accused by Sinn Féin supporters of raising Quinn’s murder for their own agenda, although it was the victim’s family that pressed his case.
That accusation cannot be made in Northern Ireland, even on its own twisted terms. No executive party wants to rock Stormont’s newly-refloated boat. Media exhaustion after three years of crisis tends to the same effect.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald has now offered the Quinn family a private meeting - a tactic associated with her predecessor Gerry Adams. What is stopping her ordering Murphy to make a statement? What is stopping police questioning Murphy about the meeting he said he had with the IRA regarding the murder in 2007?
Arranging or attending a meeting with three or more members of a proscribed organisation is itself a serious offence.
What is preventing all this, of course, is that we have managed to place the IRA both under the radar and above the law. It is the worst of both possible worlds.
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Former UUP leader Mike Nesbitt has told an event at Stormont he was “burned out of office by some rather sectarian reaction from the unionist community” after saying he would “give a first preference vote in the 2017 election to the SDLP.”
No doubt Nesbitt experienced such reaction but his general point is over-stretched. What happened in 2017 is that Nesbitt said “vote Mike, get Colum”, only for SDLP leader Colum Eastwood to very obviously say nothing. This is what left the UUP leader looking burned.
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The Stormont event Nesbitt addressed was already a comedy goldmine. It was the launch of an academic report on sectarianism, commissioned by trade union Unison and lobby group the Committee for the Administration of Justice because they did not like another academic report on sectarianism, commissioned by charity the Sir George Quigley fund and endorsed by the Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs. An introductory 15 pages of the 56-page second report were devoted to catty jibes at the “oddly retro” first report and its “modish” authorship, all over some arcane point about the difference between “good relations” and “community relations”.
It is tempting to say only Northern Ireland could produce two bitterly opposed reports on sectarianism. In truth, academia does this everywhere.
