And Will adds the Catholic Communications Office statement to “clarify media reporting on Cardinal Seán Brady”

1. The State’s first Child Abuse Guidelines came into effect in 1987 and the Church’s first guidelines Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response, were published in 1996.

2. In late March 1975, Fr Seán Brady was asked by his bishop, Bishop Francis McKiernan, to conduct a canonical enquiry into an allegation of child sexual abuse which was made by a boy in Dundalk, concerning a Norbertine priest, Fr Brendan Smyth.

3. Fr Brady was then a full-time teacher at St Patrick’s College, Cavan. Because he held a doctorate in Canon Law, Fr Brady was asked to conduct this canonical enquiry; however he had no decision-making powers regarding the outcome of the enquiry. Bishop McKiernan held this responsibility.

4. On 29 March 1975, Fr Brady and two other priests interviewed a boy (14) in Dundalk. Fr Brady’s role was to take notes. On 4 April 1975, Fr Brady interviewed a second boy (15) in the Parochial House in Ballyjamesduff. On this occasion Fr Brady conducted the inquiry by himself and took notes.

5. At the end of both interviews, the boys were asked to confirm by oath the truthfulness of their statements and that they would preserve the confidentiality of the interview process. The intention of this oath was to avoid potential collusion in the gathering of the inquiry’s evidence and to ensure that the process was robust enough to withstand challenge by the perpetrator, Fr Brendan Smyth.

6. A week later Fr Brady passed his findings to Bishop McKiernan for his immediate action.

7. Eight days later, on 12 April 1975, Bishop McKiernan reported the findings to Fr Smyth’s Religious Superior, the Abbot of Kilnacrott. The specific responsibility for the supervision of Fr Smith’s activities was, at all times, with his Religious Superiors. Bishop McKiernan withdrew Brendan Smyth’s priestly faculties and advised psychiatric intervention.

To repeat myself,

If Peter Hain’s improper political motivation had been equally exempted from scrutiny would his Interim appointment have been ruled unlawful?

And as Mark Devenport said at the time

In short, this judgment looks to have cut the legs off any future attempt to judicially review the OFMDFM and to provide a “carte blanche” for meetings without officials and note takers present.

But never fear, if you disagree in the future with an OFMDFM decision, you don’t need to turn to the courts, because our ministers, as Mr Justice Gillen notes “are accountable to the Assembly where they are likely to be questioned and scrutinised”. And we all know just how effective the Assembly has been at carrying out that job in the past.

Surely not. Policing and governance are transformed. We can only hope the transformation survives under pressure. Now that Justice powers are being transferred what can Sinn Fein do to help? An ideological contest among republicans seems a no win. As revolutionaries, the rejectionists ( as I prefer to call the dissidents) reject the ballot box in principle until they are dead or revolutionaries no more. Will mainstream republicans leave all initiatives entirely to the State apparatus or exploit their local networks to squeeze the rejectionists? ( And I don’t mean nutting or kneecapping). So far they’ve claimed little success.

If by one means or another, the test on the ground is passed, a steady flow of information will lead to arrests and an eventual collapse of rejectionist activity.  In the meantime, unless mainstream republicans make a convincing case that they can deliver all this on their own, we should hear fewer kneejerk condemnations of intelligence gathering and stop and search. And if we’re looking for lessons from the past, although we have the residue of the past 30 years added on, the parallel worth examining is the border campaign of 1957-62, defeated not mainly by policing but by the will of the nationalist people.  The option of internment south of the border (administered by Charles Haughey in 1962, the last Irishman to have imposed it), we can take to be no longer relevant.

Ireland, Ireland!

By ‘The Duckworth Lewis Method’

Ireland, Ireland, damp sod of earth
lost on the surf of the North Atlantic.
Ireland, Ireland, mountains and mist,
Vodka and chips, it’s so romantic.

Joyce and Heaney, Beckett and Wilde,
Bill O’Herlihy, Dunphy and Giles,
Evans, Hewson, Mullen and Clayton,
Westlife and Jedward the pride of our nation!

Ireland, Ireland, once we were poor,
Then we were wealthy; now we are poor again.
Cows and horses, donkeys and sheep,
Munster and Leinster, Connacht and ******.

Chinese, Polish, Africans too,
Doing the jobs we don’t want to do.
An Irish stew, a nation of nations,
Working for peanuts in petrol stations.

Ireland, Ireland, you are the best
Place to the west of Wales and Scotland.
Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell,
But I’d rather be Irish than anything else.”

WRITTEN BY ‘DUCKWORTH & LEWIS’ c.2010

Although a BBC report notes Cardinal Séan Brady’s statements in December last year.

However, in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE last December, the cardinal said he, himself, would resign if he found that a child had been abused as a result of any managerial failure on his part.

“I would remember that child sex abuse is a very serious crime and very grave and if I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then, I think I would resign,” he said.

At that time, the cardinal apologised on behalf of the Church after an Irish government report revealed abuse over decades, a systematic cover-up by the Church and a lack of action by Irish police.

He said: “No-one is above the law in this country.

“Every Catholic should comply fully with their obligations to the civil law and co-operate with the Gardai (Irish police) in the reporting and investigation of any crime.”

And, as Crooked Timber’s Maria Farrell notes

The Irish adult voices of raped children are joined by American ones; people now grown up who were raped and abused by Fr. Smith when he was sent away from these shores and off to where he wasn’t known and could start again. A Connecticut woman poignantly asks why she was repeatedly raped by a priest who had been sent to America instead of to the police. An Irish woman asks why no one went to the police. If they had, she might have been saved. Many might have been saved.

Will Crawley widens the story out onto the European stage

Last month, reports began to surface of historic abuse cases in several elite Jesuit boarding schools in Germany.

The German Catholic Church is now dealing with multiplying new reports of physical and sexual abuse, including some linked to a renowned choir once led by Pope Benedict’s brother, Fr Georg Ratzinger.

As the domino effect of reporting continues, the wave of abuse revelations reached the Netherlands by late February, with scores of victims coming forward.

By March, the scandal had spread to Switzerland, where 60 new cases have now come to light.

And in the past few weeks, more abuse cases have emerged in Austria and Poland.

This weekend, a Vatican spokesman denounced “aggressive” efforts by the media to personally implicate the Pope in the unfolding child abuse crisis as questions were raised about the handling of a priest accused of molestation in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising when the future Pope was archbishop in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Last Friday, the Pope met the President of the German Bishops’ Conference to discuss the wider sex abuse crisis, just as an archbishop in Austria was breaking ranks to call for a public discussion about the future of the mandatory celibacy rule for priests.

Some informed Vatican sources now predict that the text of Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter to the Irish church will need to be expanded to include churches across Europe as full realisation dawns that the clerical sex abuse crisis now facing the church is a European problem, not just an Irish one.

The first suggestion might be to take the UUP at their word that they did not agree to the devolution of P&J for the reasons they claimed: namely that the executive is extremely dysfunctional and has no realistic ability to agree a programme for government that takes any remotely controversial decisions. There is no agreement on education which has been reduced to the state of a farce; a very black one when the fact is that it has caused confusion and despair for many parents and has resulted in children sitting more tests with less certainty than ever before. Genuinely having made such an unbelievable hash of education should the executive be given further power? Clearly much of the chaos has been driven by the ideological zealotry of Catriona Ruane but she is still there as large as life, as zealous and useless as ever. To be fair the favourite putative P&J minister, David Ford, a man lacking in any ideology it seems save that of his own self aggrandisement, presents less such problems. However, a combination of the high likelihood of P&J being led by the weakest minister (both politically and personally) in the United Kingdom and with his strings being pulled by such diametrically opposed parties as the DUP and Sinn Fein, is enough to make anyone outside the cosy cabal of Sinn Fein, the DUP and Mr. Ford uneasy.

However, whilst the UUP may have had good practical and principled reasons for opposing P&J devolution there is a significant feeling that there were also party political reasons for this recourse to principle. The UUP’s whole strategy in this may be an extension of the one I suggested some weeks ago: the Battle of the Nile strategy or that which Jim Molyneaux used relatively successfully in the 1980s and early 1990s (the incongruence of likening Nelsonian leadership to that of Emepy’s or Molyneaux’s is sufficiently amusing to bear repetition). Essentially this was (like Nelson at the Nile) to attack on both sides of one’s opponents. For the UUP the idea is to offer unionist voters a party simultaneously more liberal and yet more hard line than the DUP. Molyneaux managed this by having leading members more liberal and more hard line; simultaneously more socially and economically left and right wing than the DUP. Duncan Shipley Dalton has very correctly pointed out that this strategy fell apart when any form of active move forwards was required and was correctly called by John Hunter “Steady as she drifts” but it remains an attractive concept for the UUP.

The UUP may, in their more deluded moments, feel with their alliance with the Conservatives that they may be able to achieve the same sort of result and produce a united unionist party by destroying the DUP. The UUP have consistently been seen as more liberal than the DUP from the time of Molyneaux onwards; Trimble having rapidly abandoned the hard liners who elected him. Furthermore their alliance with the Conservatives could be seen as a further example of becoming more liberal within a Northern Ireland context. Hence, the CU tie up could be a good way to gain that mythical beast of great electoral power: the garden centre Prod. It could also appeal to that sentiment most common amongst unionists within the Pale that Northern Ireland should be and indeed is as British as, if not Finchley, at least the leafier bits of greater Birmingham. Additionally if the CU project could produce in material voting form that other fantasy creature, the Unionist Catholic then the CUs would indeed be on the way to electoral power. Hence, the CU pact has the potential to further “out left” the DUP and maybe eat into the Alliance vote.

Such a strategy, however, depends on the strength of the two righteous mythical creatures, the unicorns of unionist fantasy: the Garden centre Prod and the unionist Catholic. Unionist analysts have long disagreed regarding the existence of these beasts and indeed a number of quests over the years to find and exploit their power have ended pretty tragically for all concerned:Franklin’s lost expedition to navigate the North West passage comes to mind as an analogy.

Set against the dangers of a Franklin typed disaster there are of course other strategies to gain unionist support back to the CUs and it is in this context that the most cynical analyses of the UUP decision to oppose P&J devolution are made. It is abundantly clear that a significant segment of the DUP’s previous support is now very annoyed with their former party of choice. The double jobbing, dynasties and perception of arrogance all worked very strongly against the DUP in the European elections; now in addition Irisgate has been added to the mix. Most importantly, however, is the simple fact that many harder line unionists disapprove of the DUP’s decision to share power with Sinn Fein and in June last year took their revenge on the party by voting for Allister. It is unlikely that much of that anger will have dissipated now that the DUP have been seen to have had to accept a deal which, whatever their protestations, looks like a defeat for them.

Jim Allister and the TUV were of course the main beneficiaries of the fall in DUP support at Europe. However, the very clear voting dynamic whereby TUV supporters transferred to the CUs was present. In the Westminster election the TUV will of course not stand in every seat and in addition there are seats where the UUP were close to the DUP in votes and as such some TUVists might lend their vote to the UUP to bash the DUP. The exact extent of that (especially the latter) part of the voting dynamic is difficult to assess and may be small. However, it is at the heart of the CUs (or more exactly the UUPs) desire to “out right” the DUP and capture some TUV support.

In that context opposing the devolution of P&J makes sense and if the suggestion can be put across that the reasons for opposing P&J are politically “left” (in terms of competence and opposing a sectarian carve up) as well as “right” of the DUP then it might have been and may yet be a cleverer tactic than many of its detractors within the DUP and indeed the media have suggested. It is possible that opposing P&J might gain TUV typed support without further endangering the Franklin-esque quest for those unicorns. Media commentators (with a number of honourable exceptions) have for many years now, been very poor at assessing the voting patterns of unionists and suggesting that the UUP’s decision was so very flawed on P&J may be even more naive than those very commentators were suggesting that the UUP were.

However, although the plan may be a good one and may look like a Battle of the Nile, it could end up being more like the Lake Balaton Offensive, the last German advance of the Second World War where, desperate to regain the oil fields around the eponymous lake, the Germans made one last attack against the Russians and after a few brief gains were forced back yet again.

The reasons for such pessimism regarding the CU’s chances are not simply in the potential the P&J decision has to annoy the unicorns but probably more significantly (like the Germans at Lake Balaton) the lack of resources available to the CUs. The candidates they have are not especially convincing and as I noted previously there is an apparent disconnect in the matching of the candidate and the seat in question. This is nowhere more stark than in Upper Bann where Harry Hamilton, local candidate and no doubt all round nice guy that he is, has his work cut out trying to persuade TUV types to support him over Simpson; even more so if the TUV do not run.

The problem for the CUs is their lack of talent and almost complete absence of strength in depth: a problem which of course afflicts all Northern Ireland’s political parties but is particularly evident for the CUs in view of their very considerable ambition; namely to overtake once again the DUP and become the major unionist party. Ideally, should Franklin return triumphant, along with added unicorns. A further related problem for the CU’s is of course the DUP’s incumbency of the seats in question and now since Lady Hermon will not be standing in North Down for them, they have no incumbent MP. Incumbency is a major advantage, apart from where the MP in question has been a major disaster (Strangford) or has failed to really gel with the constituency (South Antrim). In all the other seats where the CUs are targeting the DUP, they are taking on an at least semi competent incumbent. North Antrim of course will not have an incumbent but there unless the CUs can resurrect Lord Carson or Viscount Craigavon, it will be a battle between Jim Allister and Ian Paisley junior and the lack of a current MP is most unlikely to be of any real help to the CU project. Even the most ardent CU fantasy explorer has not claimed any significant unicorn sightings up in North Antrim.

The decisions the UUP made over P&J may have been in part both principled and those of low political cunning. However, a political party should try to increase the options and electoral base open to it whilst at the same time reducing the options open to its opponents (or rivals to use Fitzjameshorse’s excellent explanation). The decision on P&J may have been lambasted by the chattering classes and those in the current cosy cabal up at Stormont. However, the lack of executive competence may play fairly well to the more moderate potential CU voters (and any unicorns out there), whilst more traditional NI political views may please the TUVists (the fantasy ogres if one wants). Hence, it is just possible that with the Conservative tie up nailing down the space to the “left” of the DUP, the opposition to P&J devolution can be utilised as a device to open up support opportunities to the DUP’s “right.”

In spite of the fact that the UUP’s decision may have been far from a bad one, the reality remains that the CUs may not do very well at this election: that probably has a great deal more to do with their inherently weak position and talent base, along with some poor candidate / seat matches than it has with the supposedly awful decision to oppose the transfer of P&J.

After the failure of the Balaton offensive, Hitler ordered that the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler remove their Adolf Hitler armbands as they had failed to fight properly. If the CU’s latest battle is a failure no doubt some will try to pass the blame for the failure to the P&J decision. It will be as nonsensical as Hitler’s hysterical order. However, when the T-34s, be they real or metaphorical, are about to overrun the bunker, rationality is often absent. Or turning back to Franklin: the main reason he failed was that he was about 100 years too early to have the necessary nuclear powered ice breakers.

29. The Committee heard the phrase “with hindsight” on a number of occasions throughout the course of the inquiry. It is essential that those central to this incident take the opportunity to look back at their roles, and those that they interacted with, and critically assess their performance. It is equally a necessity that changes will be identified and that these changes need to be implemented with all urgency. Paramount, in the view of the Committee, is the streamlining of the process, including the number of statutory bodies and other agencies involved in the process. The Committee believes that this can be achieved through the establishment of an Incident Management Team.

30. The Committee heard from most of the organisations that they were content that their individual processes, on the whole, were successful and that the main objective, that is protecting the public health, was achieved. The Committee acknowledges this as being important. However, the Committee would draw attention to the fact that this incident did not have a “happy ending” and that the Northern Ireland industry is still struggling with the ramifications of the incident, primarily the financial consequences that have to be absorbed. If such an incident occurs in the future, it is essential that these are considered and that a proportionate response that protects both the public health and the local and wider economies is taken. It is equally important that the industry is kept informed through a single communication source, such as the Incident Management Team.

31. The events leading up to and beyond 6 December 2008 have placed the Northern Ireland agricultural sector in a precarious position at a time whenever the pressures of the global economy are being widely felt by the industry. Whilst an aid package was eventually provided by the Northern Ireland Executive to the Northern Ireland industry, the Committee does not believe this to be sufficient, as the aid package was restricted to a very precise part of the industry. The Committee calls on the authorities in both jurisdictions to revisit their respective schemes, given the benefit of hindsight and assess how aid can be provided to those currently considered ineligible to ensure that the financial risks being faced by these businesses disposing of slurry, milk and retail materials are negated.

And specifically on the lack of communication between the Irish Minister and the Northern Irish Minister

Communication

16. The Committee considers the absence of appropriate communication to be the most significant weakness identified during the course of the inquiry and that this was the single most critical contributory factor to the near-collapse of our industry in Northern Ireland.

17. The Committee believes that it is totally unacceptable for the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development to learn of the total recall of Irish pork and pork products by chance whilst watching a news programme in the late evening of Saturday, 6 December 2009. This is despite a meeting having been held earlier that day between the Taoiseach, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Minister for Health and Children, the Chief Medical Officer, the FSAI and officials from the relevant statutory bodies in the Republic of Ireland.[5] The Committee believes that it should have been incumbent on the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the Republic of Ireland to have contacted the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland immediately following this meeting. [added emphasis]

18. The Committee is particularly alarmed as this failure to communicate the seriousness of the situation and the unilateral decision to recall these products by the Irish authorities was taken despite being aware that a number of farms in Northern Ireland had received this bread and that some 9,000 live pigs are exported to Northern Ireland per week, representing approximately 18% of the total pigs slaughtered in the Republic of Ireland.[6]

19. The Committee has noted the very positive work that had previously been taken by officials in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in respect of, for example, the All-Island Animal Health Strategy. However, the Committee remains concerned at the vast difference between the principles expressed in such strategies and processes against the practical outworkings that presented themselves during the first real test of these principles.

20. The Committee has also identified a number of other breakdowns in the communication processes and these are detailed as follows:

(a) The period between the confirmation of the test results and the initial contact with DARD;

(b) The identification of the Northern Ireland farms that had received the bread (Thursday, 4 December 2008) and communication of this to DARD (Friday, 5 December 2008). This presented a number of problems, including the fact that the contact was at too low a level, the initial contact did not contain any relevant details and that DARD were required to chase DAFF late into Friday afternoon for information regarding the incident;

(c) The FSAI contacted FSA UK in the first instance on Thursday 4 December 2008 but did not contact the FSANI directly. The FSANI was formally contacted by FSA UK two days later;

(d) The Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development contacting her counterpart in the Republic of Ireland on 17 December 2008 regarding the eligibility of processors in Northern Ireland for compensation and the formal communication from Ministers at a North South Ministerial Council meeting on 23 January 2009 stating that they were unable to do so; and

(e) Because the recall was ordered (but not communicated to DARD) on Saturday 6 December, there was a dearth of information available to producers, processors and consumers on Monday 8 December 2008. This affected the ability of DARD and other agencies to provide clear decisions to industry stakeholders at what was a critical time in the process;

21. The Committee has previously commented in respect of the numbers of organisations that were (or should have been) involved through this process. The Committee is of the view that this also contributed to the poor communication witnessed because, as has been proven during this incident, the more elaborate the means of communication, inevitably the more ineffective it becomes. This can be evidenced by the number of Northern Ireland beef producers presenting cattle at abattoirs on Monday 8 December only to be advised that these animals were not permitted to enter the food chain and by farm businesses unable to access accurate information from a number of DARD offices.

And

But Mr Gormley questioned how the independent review team had come to its conclusion.

“No specific act or omission of mine has been brought to my attention which leads me to question my conduct,” he said.

He also asked why he had lost his job while others who were involved in the same “collective decision making process” had not.

“In performing my duties as a Non Executive Director of NIW I challenged certain aspects of the process undertaken by the Independent Review Team.

“I find it regrettable that of the 28 people interviewed by the Independent Review Team that I am the only individual who has not had an agreed record of his meeting with the IRT included by them in the records of their enquiries, or incorporated into their findings.

“It should be equally noted that over 70% of the issues identified in the internal audit and subsequently included in the IRT review occurred before I joined the organisation.”

He said that since he joined the board, he was not aware of any contract that was not compliant with the company’s procurement protocols.

I got to know Mr. Powell quite well in the sense that we knew each other sufficiently to engage each other. He was intellectually fascinating despite my differences with him on the obvious issues. He was however a big thinker by Northern Ireland political standards.

He saw increased representation as a victory for democracy in Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom. But many in his Ulster Unionist Party didn’t celebrate the outcome of the Speaker’s Conference. Indeed, I heard Ulster Unionists hyper-ventilating on this matter at an Ulster Unionist party Conference in the Slieve Donard Hotel in Newcastle.

Why? Simply that Powell had engineered an opening of the doors of Westminster to Hume, to be followed by Mallon, Mc Grady and so on. More Nationalist MPs joining Gerry Fitt were not what Unionists desired.

In those days, the SDLP was a greater enemy than Sinn Fein with Hume increasingly internationalising the Northern Ireland problem in Europe and in America. Ulster Unionists did not see this as an advance while Powell, the enlightened one, saw this as democracy and normality at work.

The point I am making is, however noble the Conservatives are in seeking to organise in Northern Ireland with the goal of “lifting politics here onto the national stage and stopping politics being dragged down into the gutter,” Unionists of all shades are craving unionist unity to stop Sinn Fein becoming the biggest political party in Parliament Buildings.

Republicans always need of necessity Unionism of some cue to be in bed with them but a blind man or woman on a galloping horse can see at the heart of their ‘project’ is the fragmentation of Unionism. That project is currently on track aided by Jim Allister of the TUV. That is his prerogative.

When I quoted a Unionist source previously who stated that the Hatfield Talks were about “forming an electoral entity” ahead of the Assembly elections this angered some of Slugger’s readers. Therein, may well hang the tale.

Jonathan Caine and other Conservatives have stated they are not into “head counts.” But the problem for them is that many of their Ulster Unionist bedfellows are precisely into “head counts.”

These people are not rookies. They are at the highest level in the Ulster Unionist Party and in the top echelons of the DUP. And I am told the Conservatives are bankrolling the Ulster Unionist party to fight the Westminster election.

Is there not a danger that David Cameron and his colleagues are going to be duped at the end of the day?

Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists are openly declaring Sinn Fein must be stopped from getting into a position where Martin Mc Guinness becomes First Minister after the next Assembly election. To definitively put a stop such an outcome, possibly the only instrument, clever device, or cunning plan means putting in place “a formal electoral entity.”

This is a euphemism for Unionist unity which, in Cameron’s own self selected terms, would be the quintessence of a sectarian head-count.

Should Sinn Fein and the SDLP engage in a parallel exercise many thinking Catholics of the Hume school would head for the boat and rightly so. If orange head-counting is wrong so is green head-counting.

Conservatives may yet show themselves to be innocents. Has David Cameron a post dated letter of guarantee ( It is de rigueur for every party leader to give one now) from Reg Empey that he will not opt for head counting? Are Ulster Unionists going to be glad to take the money but remain local in disposition?

There are certainly many Unionists and Conservatives who share this analysis.

From David Cameron’s point of view forewarned should be fore-armed.

For my money, the Dave show with Sir Trevor came over flat. He seemed happier in his own skin than Gordon but unlike the PM , he didn’t say a single interesting thing. Cheeky chappie Piers Morgan would have livened it up with the odd squib as he did for Gordon. The appearances on non-news shows continue even before the campaign has started.  Latest Gordon on his public image on Woman’s Hour.

It was marriage (not Sarah’s PR experience) that did it… When we’re talking about the death of a child it’s very difficult.. but I’ve got nothing to hide…(Bullying charges ) were damaging.. I’m a tough guy but I work in an open plan office and we are a family..  people have worked with me for 15, 20 years..”. 

...why is there still an irredentist rump, still carrying on as if it’s 1972, reducing a complex dispute over power and equality and national allegiance to something as naively simplistic as Brits Out?

It could be the men who murdered Kieran Doherty look around and see that the supposedly new Northern Ireland looks suspiciously like the old one. It could be they see a society still so bitterly divided, still so deeply segregated, that they believe they can exploit historical animosities, that they can capitalize on an almost reflexive tendency among most people in Northern Ireland to view things along narrow sectarian lines, as “us versus them,” an “us” that remains largely defined by a combination of religion and national identity.

And they may have a point. While the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland have shown a willingness to not kill each other, they have been less enthusiastic about the prospect of actually living with each other. Northern Ireland remains very segregated, physically and psychologically. Most people live in neighborhoods that remain overwhelmingly populated by one of the two main traditions: Catholic nationalists, who aspire to unity with the Irish Republic, and Protestant unionists, who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

And it comes at great cost, not least in the duplication of services:

Not only is there an official ethos of separate but equal, but an infrastructure underpinning it. There are three times as many so-called peace lines — elaborate walls separating working-class neighborhoods — than there were at the height of the Troubles, 88 of them at last count.

I walked through Protestant housing projects in North Belfast and noticed many vacant apartments. On the other side of the peace line, the Catholic projects were overcrowded. But there is no attempt to move Catholic families into the vacant apartments because, as they say in Belfast, even the dogs in the street know there’d be riots.

With segregation the status quo, there is an enormous duplication of public services, such as schools, community centers, and health clinics. The Alliance Party, the only major political party that draws substantial numbers from both sides of the divide, estimates that duplication of public services costs more than $1 billion a year, this in a place the size of Connecticut with a population of less than 2 million.

You can read the whole thing here

MPs approved procedural changes, which will mean that for the first time in over a century parliament will take control of its own agenda.

The changes require the new parliament to establish immediately a backbench business committee to set the parliament’s agenda for 15 days of each session. The MPs also approved a proposal establishing a general house business committee in the new parliament to be comprised of one third government representatives, one third opposition frontbenchers and one third elected by backbenchers of all parties. It is envisaged that this group would ultimately set the parliamentary agenda for all non-ministerial business.

These may sound like technical changes but together they will dramatically increase the independence of parliament from whatever government is elected in May. By taking the power to appoint chairs and select committee members from the party leaders and whips and giving it to backbenchers in a secret ballot, the capacity of those committees to hold ministers and public servants to account will be significantly enhanced.

By restoring to itself the power to set its own timetable and agenda, parliament will have brought about a significant rebalancing of the relationship between it and Whitehall.

One of my colleagues on this US trip noted that one of the abiding criticisms of the Irish system was not that it was derived from the British system, so much as it has failed to evolve since independence. Given the how the expenses row of the kind ignited by the Daily Telegraph in England, has barely begun in the Republic.

Whelan, concludes parliamentary reform is a no brainer, “taking back control over its own affairs is something Dáil Éireann should set about doing now.”

Bloody Sunday was a key moment in the rise of the Provisional IRA. Thirty eight years later, The Saville Report is being published following the Provos’ disbandment. It would be unfortunate if the changed political circumstances were to dictate the way parties in the North respond to the findings.

There has been a strangely muted reaction to the outrageous plans of the Northern Ireland Office for publication of the Report. In a separate development, an attack on the Inquiry by the prospective Minister for Justice at Stormont resulted not in clear demands that he stand down but in frantic efforts by Nationalist politicians to rescue him from his own behaviour.

The fact that groups once at war have made their peace with the British establishment should have no bearing on judgments as to what happened in Derry in 1972. The political wing of the Parachute Regiment, the New Labour Government, represented in the North by the former Tory Shaun Woodward, is not an honest broker in relation to the Saville Report but an uncritical supporter of the British Army, a facilitator in the cover-up of crime.

The fact that appalling atrocities were also carried out in the North by both Nationalist and Unionist paramilitary groups cannot be allowed to obscure the ugly role of British forces, exemplified in the Bloody Sunday killings. The main paramilitary groups have either left the stage or say that they are in the process of so doing. Nothing less should be demanded of the perpetrators of the Derry massacre.

If, as many of us are confident will be the case, Lord Saville and his colleagues find that the Bloody Sunday killings were unlawful, the demand of all who have campaigned for the truth should be for the disbandment of the Parachute Regiment.  I believe that that demand should be voiced loudly and insistently at local councils, at Stormont, at Westminster and in every forum where we can find a hearing.

Woodward’s thorough bad faith is clear from his determination that representatives of the British Government, including members of MI5, be given days to pore over the Report before the families or their representatives are allowed sight of it. This is the same MI5 which supplied Army commanders with false information about the Bogside in the days before Bloody Sunday and which has just been denounced by Britain’s top judges for perjury and collusion in torture in the Binyam Mohamed case.  Woodward’s suggestion is that MI5 should be invited to recommend the deletion of lines in the Report which, in its opinion, would put national security at risk. 

This, of course, was the exact reason given by MI5 in the Mohamed case for wanting the suppression of documents relating to torture. The appeal rejected MI5 bona fides with something approaching contempt.

Despite all this, I suspect that some in the audience will have been entirely unaware of the role Woodward intends for MI5 in relation to Saville. There has hardly been a major controversy about the matter. This, in my view, is because Nationalist politicians don’t want a row which might unsettle the institutions which they have become part of.

The same issue is raised even more sharply by the outburst from the prospective Minster for Justice at Stormont, Alliance Party leader David Ford.  A leaked email revealed that Ford - like some Unionist sectarians, right-wing Tories, the Daily Mail etc. - regards the Bloody Sunday Inquiry as “pointless”. He’s entitled to his view. But it is a view which, whatever about other ministries, ought to have disqualified him immediately from the job of supervising the justice system.

But, astonishingly, it was the larger of the two nationalist parties which rushed most quickly to his rescue, arranging a meeting with a number of relatives of the victims at extremely short notice and then issuing Ford with a clean bill of health. The fear was that if their chosen nominee for the position wasn’t rehabilitated pronto, plans for the devolution of policing and justice might be endangered.

Once again, politics trumped truth.

I don’t make it a secret that my own views on these matters are dictated by my politics. I am a socialist, and therefore a firm opponent of both militarism and paramilitarism. I base my hopes for the future not on a system which takes the division between the communities for granted but on the self-activity of the mass of working class people. So I have no stake in the Stormont system. Neither do I believe that the choice before us is between the Stormont deal and a return to all-out violence. These are things we can debate over the coming years.

But we don’t have the luxury of years when it comes to Bloody Sunday. I say that even those who do have a stake in the system should step back, take a hard look and ask themselves whether, in this instance, and perhaps without thinking the issues through, they have not allowed the system to take precedence over all other considerations.

Whilst Arlene Foster might like to be MP, it is clear that unless there is a unity candidate unionism is most unlikely to retake FST. Furthermore, there is considerable the animosity between the DUP and UUP in FST and many UUP members remain annoyed with Foster personally for having jumped ship from the UUP to the DUP. Hence, any personal ambition she may have to be an MP is unrealistic, at least in the short term, and as such her standing aside is maybe less painful for her than if she had a good chance of being elected. In addition since the DUP’s decision to enter power sharing with the UUP, support for the DUP seems to have dropped in FST. Although Foster herself won the Enniskillen by election, easily defeating the UUP candidate; areas outside that district electoral area seem to have swung more firmly against the DUP. In the European election there was some suggestion that although some small unionist towns like Lisbellaw (within the Enniskillen DEA) stayed loyal to the DUP, others such as Kesh and Ballinamallard and the unionist vote in the border areas of West and South Fermanagh has moved away from the DUP. The South Tyrone part of FST has also been suggested to have become more disenchanted with the DUP following their entry into government with Sinn Fein.

In view of all of this it was quite possible that if Arlene Foster were to stand again against Tom Elliott for the Westminster election, she might come off second best in the intra unionist contest: the opposite result to the 2005 election. Such an outcome would be a bit of a blow to the DUP and, hence, for Foster to offer to stand aside is further good politics as it will then increase the pressure on Tom Elliott to do likewise and help allow an agreed civic unionist candidate to emerge. Although Norman Baxter has ruled himself out, he may come under renewed pressure to reconsider his position and indeed the CUs may be put under pressure to allow some form of words to be devised which could permit an agreed candidate to be less than a fully fledged member of the Conservative Party should they win at the general election.

All the above also leaves aside the effect that an agreed unionist candidate would have on nationalist / republican voting intentions. Although Fearghal McKinney the former UTV presenter has declared his intention of running for the SDLP, this is a seat which would require a seismic shift in voting for the SDLP to win. Rather it is quite possible that an agreed unionist candidate would result in an even larger percentage of the nationalist vote supporting Michelle Gildernew in an attempt to head off a unionist victory. It might also reduce any tendency to a fall in Gildernew’s hard line vote from those who object to Sinn Fein’s supposed compromises. Though few would see Ms. Gildernew as on the moderate wing of Sinn Fein; Fermanagh seems to have amongst the largest percentage of republicans who object to the new dispensation. If there were a single unionist candidate, then the SDLP might, paradoxically find a reduction in its vote despite their new high profile candidate and the election might begin to approximate to the bitter head count battles of 1981 when the SDLP failed to stand against either Bobby Sands or Owen Carron.