From the BBC report

Mr Robinson said both he and Mr McGuinness had a full itinerary that was focused on the “economy, the financial and business issues”.

“We aren’t just having the meeting in Washington with the business leaders,” Mr Robinson said.

“We are going to New York where we are meeting a number of business people, and we’ll see some projects there as well.”

The benchmark for Mr Speaker..

In January 1642, Charles, accompanied by over 300 swordsmen, entered St Stephen’s in a foolhardy attempt to arrest five of his principal opponents in the Commons on a charge of treason. The members, however, had been warned of Charles’s intention and escaped.

When asked where the members could be found, the Speaker, William Lenthall, fell to his knees before the King and said:

“May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”

More on Mr Speaker William Lenthall.

Adds  According to the Titanic Quarter Development website

The state-of-the-art building, designed by leading international architects and designers will include a ‘Titanic Experience’ exhibition, a ‘Flying Theatre’ which allows visitors a birds eye view across Northern Ireland, a Titanic-themed banqueting suite and a community arts facility for local exhibitions, performances and conferences.

Children who have been in care are: 10 times more likely to be excluded from school; 12 times more likely to leave school with no qualifications; 4 times more likely to be unemployed; 60 times more likely to join the ranks of the homeless; 50 times more likely to be sent to prison; and their own children are 66 times more likely to need public care than the children of those who have not been in public care themselves (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999; DHSSPS, 2006). Mooney, Fitzpatrick, & Hewitt (2006) indicated that in Northern Ireland, 96 (10%) of the 986 children aged over nine years old in public care were cautioned or convicted in 2002/03, compared to 1% of all children in Northern Ireland; and 9% of school age children in care were suspended from school in 2002/03, compared with 1.7% of the general school population in Northern Ireland.

Though it notes:

A difficulty is that these figures typically compare children who have been in care with the average for the whole population, rather than children from the same backgrounds who have not been in care. 

Outcomes for children seem to vary based on Health Board area and may be due to ‘particular traditions’ within boards:

Higher percentages of children followed the adoption pathway in the Northern (59%) and Southern (69%) Boards, compared to the Eastern Board (33%) and the Western Board (19%). Higher percentages of children followed the non-relative (46%) and relative foster care (14%) pathways in the Western Board; and a higher percentage of children followed the birth parents (34%) pathway in the Eastern Board. In both the Northern and Southern Boards, 12% of the children in care were at home with their parents in 2000. These figures were 18% in the Eastern Board, and 9% in the Western Board area. Children from the Eastern Board, who were in foster care in 2000, were 6½ times more likely to be returned to birth parents by 2002 than those from the Northern Board. It was also found that children from the Northern Board were 2½ times more likely to be adopted by 2002 than those from the Western Board.

Such variation in decision-making in child welfare has been found in many studies and jurisdictions (Packman, 1966 and 1986; Lowe and Murch, 2002). Even where there is general agreement on what the long-term plan should be for young children who cannot return, different authorities generate very different patterns. .......(Kelly et al., 2007).

Implications

Given that statistical comparisons across multiple variables showed that the groups of children within each of the Trusts are very similar, these variations may lie in the decision-making, and particular traditions of the Boards and Trusts ..... The variation in the proportion of children returned home also needs further and careful consideration in view of the evidence of the troubled nature of the return home placements that this study has identified (see part two which deals with the parent and carer interviews).

A key question is: If the needs of the child are central to deciding on a long term placement, why are major variations in professional decision-making being found across Northern Ireland? The recent Reform of Public Administration (RPA), creating five Health and Social Care Trusts where there were previously 11, the development of Regional Policy and Procedures in relation to adoption, and the Government’s plan to regionalise elements of the adoption service, may help foster greater consistency. However, consistency will not be improved if the reasons for inconsistency stem from more deeply held values/opinions on the appropriateness of different placement paths for children and families.

On the need for support:

The percentage of children whose mother was living alone on 31st March 2000 was high (54%) compared with the average population for Northern Ireland of around 15% (Percy, Higgins, and McCrystal, 2001). This high level of lone parenting mirrors other research in this area (Kelly and McSherry, 2002; Selwyn et al., 2003). Children whose mother was living alone when the study started were 2½ times more likely to be adopted by 2002 than those whose parents were living together. This may suggest that Social Services are more likely to deem lone parents to be less able to provide long-term care for their children.

Implications

The need for a family support strategy to be developed in conjunction with the Boards and Trusts was outlined in Priorities for Action 2004/2005 (DHSSPS, 2004a), and the 20-year regional strategy (A Healthier Future) focused on the importance of family-support services (DHSSPS, 2004b). The findings presented here should encourage Heath and Social Care Trusts, and other relevant health care agencies, to review the nature and quality of supports that are currently in place for lone parents, particularly in terms of preventing children entering care

And

Furthermore, 20% of children under the age of one when they first entered care were still in foster care after four years. Clearly, adoption was not the only option for this age group in Northern Ireland. This appears to reflect the variation in long-term placement practices across Northern Ireland. For example, in the Southern Board area, no children who entered care before the age of one remained in foster care, whereas this figure is as high as 52% in the Western Board area.

So do these variations in outcomes indicate broader problems with standards, direction and processes? And are the Health Minister and Children’s Commissioner on the case?

It sounded as if the government are facing a People’s Revolt over foot-dragging over bank lending and the feebleness of the Vat cut. Iv’e never heard an audience speaking more strongly from the heart.  Douglas Alexander, the unfortunate minister on parade   kept repeating that the government were “working day and night “  to get the banks to lend. Thunderous applause greeted the audience member who shouted “You say you’re working and working – get the thing done.. If you think you’re going to win an election with this going on you can think again. ”  Another businessman complained that although he had good security for a loan the bank wasn’t even returning his calls. It was a solemn moment when panelist member Justin King  the CEO of Sainsbury’s confirmed :“ Yes this is happening all over the country.”

The public are growing impatient.  You could be forgiven if you thought the main UK banks had been “nationalised” weeks ago. It turns out the first one is coming through only today. Resistance continues to the Lloyds TSB/HBos merger. To be fair, these seismic changes in economic management by the state are bound to take more than a few weeks to bite. Credit guarantees for mortgage lending is another option the government are “working on” and in retail, more shots are left in the locker.

Question Time from Newry next Thursday should be good. It’s bound to feature a lively debate on the pros and cons of the new (temporary?)  economic border.

By Eoin O’Broin

Last weeks Irish Times/TNS MBRI opinion poll was bad news for Sinn Féin. The numbers were troublesome from a number of perspectives.

Of course polls should be treated with caution. However they should never be ignored. The trick is in the reading. They offer a rough snapshot of public opinion at a given moment while mapping out the longer-term trends. Though not always right, they are rarely wrong.

There value is that they help us gauge how the public is responding to our message. They are another piece of political intelligence to throw into the mix.

Whatever way you look at the most recent poll Sinn Féin is not doing well.

We are sitting steady at 8%. In the three other TNS MRBI polls this year we held a similar position, with 8% in June, 6% in May and 8% in January.

More worrying is the drop in Gerry Adams satisfaction rate, down 12 points to 33%. Some comfort can be taken from the fact that he is more popular than Brian Cowan and John Gormley. However the drop is a sharp decline after several years in the high 40s and low 50s.

However the most troubling of the numbers is the party’s performance in Dublin. While at first glance our 9% in the city looks promising it is significantly behind Fine Gaels 20%, Labour’s 16%, Fianna Fails 15%. With seven months to go till next years European Parliamentary election these figures should make us very nervous.

The bottom line in all of this is that the party is stagnating. While we have managed to regain some of the ground lost in the 2007 general election, there is no indication that we are returning to the February 2004 high of 12%.

Of course the polls don’t tell you the reasons behind the numbers. That bit we have to work out for ourselves.

Sinn Féin had massive media exposure during the Lisbon Treaty campaign. Our position was distinct from all the other major parties. Our message was coherent, well presented and well received. Yet the Irish Times polls suggest that we gained only 2%.

Since then Fianna Fáil have fallen to an all time polling low of 27%, with Cowan’s personal approval rating down to 26%. Unemployment is at an all time high, the economy is in recession, and Fianna Fáil’s economic Midas touch has been exposed as the sham it always was.

Yet despite all of these shocks, Sinn Féin is not gaining ground. You would think that that section of Fianna Fáil’s base, who are suffering most from the current economic crisis, would find Sinn Féin the most attractive alternative. After all, these are the people who ensured the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Yet the polls suggest otherwise.

Next years local and European elections can be good news for Sinn Féin, but only if we understand the causes of our current stagnation and respond accordingly.

First published in An Phoblacht 20th November, 2008

The book isn’t a history of the IRA or an exhaustive examination of the provisional movement. Rather, it comprises a central thesis, which McDonald fleshes out over 200 odd pages. It is a compelling, and tidily presented, argument. Although its contents might seem somewhat obvious to those who have watched Sinn Féin’s metamorphosis, they benefit from being laid down in sequential, if rather atomised, fashion.

In my own view, the polemic is less compelling than the facts he peppers the beginning of the book from the movement’s own commemoration to it’s own dead, Tirghra, not least his estimation that only 36 volunteers were killed by the various factions of loyalist paramilitaries - who chose to terrorise the Catholic population by murdering innocents instead - whilst 266 were killed in ‘bungled operations. “Less than 12 where deliberately killed and targeted by loyalist paramilitaries. Moreover, only 40 per cent of IRA casualties were a result of confrontations with their main enemy - the British Army.

Figures which challenge to a large extent the idea that British used Loyalist paramilitaries to target leading IRA figure, in the way that is often suggested. Unlike the socialist government of Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who used the Grupo Antiterrorista de Liberacion (GAL), a ragbag mixture of hired killers, police assassins and intelligence agents to kill and kidnap.

McDonald also highlights leading figures on the British left, not least Ken Livingston, who in an interview with Olivia O’Leary for Magill Magazine that he’d withdraw the troops with just ten days notice:

“Red Ken clearly had no fears that in that ten-day period the Loyalists would be any trouble. In fact he tellsO’Leary that he would be prepared to stay in west Belfast for the duration of the British pull out.

“The Protestant terrorists wouldn’t get involved in a civil war. They would know that the international forces would stop them. The very balance of terror between the two sides would stop such a war and the Irish could all get down to working out a constitution, a new deal, which Protestants would be quick to have a say in”.

This is a book whose own self declared mission is not to chart a future for Republicanism but to set some records straight on the past. It remains to be seen whether that tradition has a future on the island as whole, or whether it is to confined to the Defenderist tradition of Northern Ireland. By and large according to McDonald, the IRA’s struggle for national self determination rarely raised itself above an at times fairly squalid sectarian war with it’s neighbours.

If the book lacks a certain generosity in its analysis, that may be explained in some degree by the Movement’s own lack of generosity to anyone beyond its own Republican Pale. And it is tough on what David Aaronovich terms the self-exculpatory mythology required to keep an armed struggle going in such unlikely circumstance over such an extended period of time.

He quotes Mary Alice Clancy reflecting on her thesis on the US State Department’s role in Northern Ireland under Bush:

“They were interested in how the British not only infiltrated the IRA but also shaped policy; how they promoted and encouraged those emerging bin the movement that were more realistic, the ones who realised they could not win the war. I think it is the central lession they, the US State Departmern officials I spoke to, believed they could draw for Iraq.”

And yet, out of that struggle, for good or ill, Sinn Fein has emerged the dominant political strain within Northern Irish nationalism, which notwithstanding last year’s disasterous showing in the Dail election, still retains ambitions of breakout of the leftist ghetto that previous projects like the Workers Party and Clann na Poblachta abjectly failed to do. It’s long term success or failure may depend on the impact of the kind of analytic work carried by Eoin O’Broin’s Sinn Fein and the Politics of Left Republicanism (Irish Left Republicanism). In which respect, it’s another book that’s both welcome and long overdue.

However, McDonald sets himself the more limited task of taking up Orwell’s imperative (via Johnny) “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

Digging himself deep into a hole in the manner he has seemed happiest with for most of his political life he is implacably against compromise, sees no merit in a revised curriculum, betrays no knowledge of the development of specialist schools rather than “bog standard “ comprehensives and seems to believe that children must be educated at a single centre for the whole of their lives from 11 to 18.  Scenting DUP betrayal at the idea of choice at 14 rather than selection at 11, he rests content on his self-awarded laurels. McCartney seems to have scant concern for the children of the Shankill whence he came who don’t possess the particular skills of a budding QC.

Catriona Ruane is an all too easy hit. 

Yesterday, I heard Nigel Dodds say that a solution is possible provided it’s accepted that selection remains the starting point. As a debate on the future of education none of this is good enough. The future of secondary schools is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians and the experts.

What’s needed urgently is open discussion and local information that people can understand – of the revised curriculum with the new Authority ( we only need one) and with the right to tweak the subjects.  Open area planning for school change should be equally mandatory with sight of clear options for reshaping secondary schooling in each area, taking into account a period of falling rolls and proposed curriculum changes.  Only then will parents be able to see for themselves whether a threat exists to schools they admire or find some different and attractive subjects suitable for their children’s development.  In this process of open consultation, I suggest at least two “maps”of NI secondary schools should be produced; one taking account solely of the implication of falling rolls in all types of school in each area ; the other also demographic-based but allowing for faith difference. Both maps would suggest new synergies and relationships and would involve parents, councillors and the wider public.

Stormont at all levels needs to get on with it.  There isn’t much time. The big money stops after 2011, when the need to make swingeing cuts will dominate the debate.