Robinson's plan: getting beyond trust

This is probably the most interesting part of the DUP analysis to emerge so far.

“Q: Sinn Féin might say you’re not required to trust them; that the point about the Belfast Agreement is that it constructed an inclusive system of government that reflected the mandate of the parties.”

“A: It doesn’t work. It has collapsed four times. You see this is the nonsense of that kind of argument; that something works because it stays up for five minutes. That’s tantamount to saying you can have a telegraph pole without cementing it in the ground because it will stand up for two seconds before it falls. It works but it doesn’t work for long and it doesn’t work for long enough.

“And for any stable political structure to endure there is a requirement that the parties who are a key part of it trust each other. That doesn’t exist under the present system, and the present system requires that level of trust in order to endure. That’s why it has been punctuated by crisis after crisis, that’s why it’s collapsed four times.”

He finishes the point by suggesting how such a remedy might be arrived at:

“…if the system that you have requires trust that is absent then it’s not going to work. Therefore you need to have a system that doesn’t require that degree of trust.”

Previously future with Sinn Féin

Slugger O'Toole

A general account used for the daily threads and other things.