“she has to face up to the political reality..”

There’s a lengthy interview with Northern Ireland Education Minister, Sinn Féin’s Caitriona Ruane, in the Irish News today [subs req]. But, as she said in a carefully presented pre-recorded interview on Tuesday’s Stormont Today, “I don’t believe most of what I believe in the papers” [sic]. Despite the Catholic Bishops’ concerns the minister is adamant that she has “brought forward very clear proposals” and that her critics “now have clarity”. The point emphasised in the Irish News was the apparent threat to by-pass the Legislative Assembly [subs req] – in the clip below, “I want to legislate for my proposals. If that doesn’t happen, well then I have to look at other ways.”

The Chairman of the Assembly’s Education Committee, the DUP’s Mervyn Storey was in the studio for Stormont Today and gave his reaction to the interview – “The minister knows, and she has to face up to the political reality. Caitriona Ruane was forced into facing up to a legal reality that she could not abolish academic selection. At some stage, probably over the summer, whenever she has time to reflect, time to consider the mess that she has created within the education system, that the political reality is that there will be no consensus on her proposals as they currently stand.”

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