O’Conall Street

The two major parties are now playing tag for the negative headlines. No sooner has the SF’s march to London dropped off the headlines that Iris Robinson guarantees the DUP a whole weekend full of negative publicity. This has not been helped by uncertainty about the DUP’s approach to discussions with the government on how they might vote on the extension of detention without trial for terror suspects to 42 days. Surely nobody in the the main unionist party or the British government is seriously considering a side deal on this issue.

Staying with the DUP it will be a good week for one or two MLAs when they find themselves promoted into government. For what it is worth the word on O’Conall Street is that following Nigel Dodds promotion to Finance, Arlene Foster will move to DETI and Gregory Campbell will enter the executive possibly in DCAL after Edwin Poots sacking.

Question is who gets environment?

Mr Robinson has a couple of options here. He could promote Jeffrey Donaldson, creating a vacancy in OFMDFM for the up and coming Simon Hamilton who is close to the new leader and his dear lady wife. Dark horse could be Michelle McIlveen who has impressed and would provide a much needed gender balance to the ministerial team or Sammy Wilson who would bring experience and a certain edge,  although the party is unlikely to want to let Caitriona Ruane off the hook that easily and will opt to keep him marking her closely as Chairperson of the Education Committee.

As for Ian Paisley Jnr I think it’s another stretch on the back benches.

 Of course I am probably totally wrong but a little speculation never hurt anyone.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Business, Corporate Communications, Current Affairs, Environment, Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.