“Northern Ireland has a commissioner for everything except corruption..”

In the Irish News, Newton Emerson identifies some more of those poisonous foundations.. to add to the rest..

Semi-official systems to reward the cooperative undoubtedly exist. Industries which are otherwise heavily regulated appear mysteriously immune from regulation in the case of certain individuals. Even more mysteriously, these individuals can find themselves back under regulation if they cross accepted peace-process ‘red lines’ on crime or anti-agreement associations.

In private conversations about this with police officers I have been told to grow up and accept that the tens of thousands of people with paramilitary pasts are still with us in the present and must be coaxed into the future. But if the need for this is so obvious, must the coaxing be so totally unaccountable?

Northern Ireland has a commissioner for everything except corruption. The Assets Recovery Agency can not investigate fraud by public-sector bodies and the Audit Office never touches anything even vaguely process-related. The media is blinded by “security” excuses at every turn.

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