A collapse of the Irish government is massively underpriced in Northern Ireland politics.
The prospect has taken another lurch forward with the Greens threatening to walk out over farm emission quotas. The coalition became a minority administration two weeks ago when a Fine Gael TD lost the whip, while there is increasing discontent inside Fianna Fáil over the whole rickety arrangement. Leo Varadkar’s scheduled return as taoiseach in December looks like a possible moment of rupture.
One reason Sinn Féin is sticking by Stormont, even as the protocol is torn up to bring the DUP back, is that republicans could be in office on both sides of the border imminently.
The implications are hardly confined to Belfast, yet there is little sign of London or Brussels factoring a Sinn Féin-led Irish government into their protocol machinations.
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The EU has launched legal action against the UK in response to the bill against the protocol passing the House of Commons.
Even remainers have worried this is needlessly antagonistic during the Tory leadership contest. However, as legal action will take a year and has been held over during protocol grace periods since last year, resuming action could be said to be the least the EU can do.
The real concern is that Brussels is making its case by claiming smuggling and fraud from Northern Ireland pose a serious threat to the EU single market. The grace periods have proved otherwise, which should be good news for everybody.
Talking up the risk will make mitigations harder to agree. Nor does it do the Republic any favours to insist there must be a hard border around Northern Ireland somewhere.
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UUP MLA Robbie Butler has told the BBC his party will consider following the SDLP into opposition, based on how the executive is handling crises in health and the cost of living.
The decision would normally be taken when a new executive is formed and all departments are up for grabs but if the UUP quits during the caretaker period a bizarre game of pass the parcel occurs, based on the seat numbers of the outgoing assembly.
The UUP’s only department, health, would go to the DUP, just as infrastructure went to Sinn Féin when the SDLP declined to hold onto it after May’s election. If the DUP refuses, the offer has to pass to Sinn Féin. Then it passes back and forth between them three more times before it goes to Alliance.
The UUP is unlikely to want to be seen to walk away from health, given the popularity of its minister Robin Swann and the fact the caretaker period ends in October anyway. But it must be tempted to drop this parcel in the DUP’s lap before winter tips the health service over the edge.
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There is an undercurrent of victim-blaming in an “urgent appeal” from the Department of Health to free up hospital beds. Families of patients are being asked to “ensure there are arrangements in place for them to be picked up promptly on the day of discharge”.
While families may cause of delays in some instances, the typical experience of discharge is hanging around for half a day for some final piece of paperwork, prescription or permission from above. It is the classic example of where streamlining an NHS process could free up staff and resources, yet there is little evidence of health managers in Northern Ireland giving this type of reform the priority it deserves.
‘Health reform’ tends to refer to grand political plans to centralise entire services. The benefits of old-fashioned time and motion studies should not be overlooked: they have been shown to increase hospital capacity by up to 70 per cent.
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The Irish government has announced it will legislate to create no-protest zones around abortion clinics. Stormont passed a similar bill in March but it has not become law as it has been referred to the Supreme Court by Northern Ireland’s attorney general, Dame Brenda King.
The rights to free expression, free assembly and freedom of conscience and religion can all be restricted “for the protection of health”. European rulings have established this applies to abortion. So there is no serious human rights case against the concept of the zones.
Dame Brenda’s complaint is that the bill contains no defence for a protester to say they did not know they were in a zone. This defence was in the bill when it was introduced by Clare Bailey, the Green Party former MLA. But other parties took it out after the PSNI advised it would make the legislation unworkable.
It all seems rather academic when the first step of enforcement in the bill is for a police officer to tell a protester they are in a zone and should leave.
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A court in Dungannon has refused to vary bail terms for a Derry man who said his electronic tag would embarrass him at a beach yoga class.
Objecting to the tag’s removal, a prosecutor said “balance has to be reached”. The pun was apparently unintentional.
Patrick McDaid, who is charged with New IRA membership, was told he could spare his blushes by taking the class in a wetsuit. Everyone on bail should learn how to do a good stretch.
