999 days of stand-off continues….

The DUP- Sinn Fein coalition today reaches 999 days. Their silent record is deafening. 

I left the talks last night pretty convinced that no governments’ paper would be produced. The mood is to plod along, trying not to get to distracted by the shifting sands of personal mood swings, ego, or party inconsistencies, in the hope that a bunch of people so representative of this region’s sectarian and violent past can see the common interest above their selfish one.

A deal may be cut and I hope it is. There will be talk about a new mood of cooperation and making Northern Ireland work. My honest opinion is these leopards will stuggle to change their spots. We should not be surprised if they bag the bits that are important to them and then go straight back to another five hundred days of standoff over education, tackling sectarianism, health and the economy.

Real change will only come when the DUP & SF start tackling the economy, education, health and sectarianism

I’m on my way back up to Hillsborough this morning. The ball is still with the DUP and SF.  Will both parties commit to this region and its future or will they put party interest first?

I don’t know whether they will make a deal or not today. What I do know is that this is not 1998 and the people really don’t care.

I hope we get to welcome a resolution later but lets be real about it. Change will only come to this region when the big two dedicate the same energy to the economy, the crisis in education and the need to tackle sectarianism as they do to standoff.

Tourism budget cuts

I asked the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Investment about the proposed £1million cuts from Tourism Ireland’s budget and their potential impact on the marketing of NI in GB on Monday. You can see our exchange at 29:30.

Crisis meeting about something that matters. Health Committee to discuss budget cuts but do the big two care?

I am due to attend my first meeting of the Assembly’s Health Committee today (you can follow it live below from 10.00am) today. It’s a big, all day session and has a one item agenda; the proposed departments 2010 – 11 spending plans and the proposals by the Finance Minister to secure £113.5 million saving from the health budget.

You’d think this would be the subject of a pretty major debate on the radio this morning. I’ll be going up there to seek assurances that font line services and programmes supporting the most vulnerable in our region will be protected but am sure many people will want to know an extra £116.8 million has slipped into the health’s budget under the heading of ‘technical changes’ and why the Minister has to date refused to even discuss potential savings with the committee. This head in the sand politics could well come back to haunt Minister McGimpsey, it will leave members will little room to support him and no statutory can hand any minister a blank cheque, particularly when nearly half of Northern Ireland’s entire budget goes on health.

I’ll have to leave the meeting for an hour at noon to attend an emergency meeting of the SDLP Assembly team. We won’t be discussing the potential crisis in health or education. We won’t be seeking an emergency budget from this failing SF-DUP lead coalition. Our discussions will centred on the fallout from a pretty sad weeks politics. That the big two seem determined to keep our politics in the sectarian trenches firing pot shots at each other from the comfort of their own defences is a sad reality we are going to have to confront.

The people of this region are over parades. They are over squabbling about the date to devolve policing and justice. They voted for inclusive government but got to exclusionary parties who prefer side deals to collective agreement. They voted for reconciliation but got block politics which shows no signs of tackling the divisions in our society.

Addressing problems in the Holylands

I asked The Minister for Employment and Learning about his attitude towards extra police powers for tackling student related problems in the Holylands on Monday in the Assembly. You can see my question and his answer at 39:40.

The bike!

Proof for the doubters on O’Conall Street that a) I own a bike and b) I ride it!

Took me about fourty minutes out yesterday morning and similar today. Going home a little faster as the long ‘loanin’ hill my predecessor from another time, Eddie Richardson used to say.

As for the talks. Seems to me the DUP and Sinn Fein want nobody else in and the two governments are unsure what to do. One thing history does tell us. Nothing gets down around here unless all parties are involved.

Time for a new politics that puts this region first

I’ll be leaving on my bike for Stormont soon to take my seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly (you can watch it live online here at noon). The need for a new politics has never been greater. 

The gap between people in our community and their public representatives is growing wider by the day. Our executive has become dominated by old politics and aging warriors who seem unable to negotiate in the common interest.
 
All around Sinn Féin and the DUP are working families struggling to make ends meet. Parents are suffering real stress because of the Minster for Education’s failure to do her job properly and nobody has done anything to tackle the cost or cause of our division in our society.
 
As a young parent and as an MLA I will not rest until we can prove that the Assembly does care about children. The time has come to produce an alternative and stand for something more then simply being against the 11plus.
 
Thousands have lost their jobs and good companies are being put to the wall. My generation never had the chance of a job for life and many of us have started our own businesses. We need MLAs who know this and are willing to support inward investments and business start ups in a real way, harnessing the talent and the energy of this region.

It is time to start building a new politics which puts the North first; a politics which is built on progressive nationalism and unionism working together, not a return to the old pacts of the 70’s and 80’s.

 I will work with any colleague who is interested in fulfilling the promise of the Good Friday Agreement. I know that is what the people want to see and what this region needs.

Serious questions remain for Gerry Adams following today’s Sunday Tribune

In today’s Sunday Tribune, Gerry Adams’ niece, Aine Tyrell strongly challenges his version of events surrounding his brother Liam’s work with young people in West Belfast. Her interview raise more serious questions for Mr Adams. This is the key passage in my mind:

But it is Gerry Adams’ account of what transpired between Áine and himself that she wants to challenge. “Gerry has said that when he found out Liam was in Sinn Féin, he couldn’t tell his colleagues Liam was a suspected paedophile in order to protect my anonymity.

“That’s nonsense. I didn’t know Liam was in Sinn Féin but had Gerry bothered to tell me, I would have waived my anonymity without hesitation. I’d have accompanied Gerry to meet his colleagues in Sinn Féin, to talk to the ard chomhairle about what Liam had done to me so they could expel him from the party. But Gerry never gave me that option.”

The same applies to the youth projects where Liam worked, Áine says. She frequently brought this up with the Sinn Féin president during two years of meetings from late 2003 until late 2005.

“I’d heard Liam was working in youth projects in west Belfast but not which ones. I repeatedly raised this with Gerry. I said I was very concerned that Liam was seeking jobs working with children. Gerry told me that was Liam’s way of trying to make up to the community for what he’d done to me. I asked Gerry how Liam had been successfully vetted for these jobs.

“I told Gerry I believed children were at risk. I said that if something happened to another child, it would be on my conscience and I couldn’t sleep at night from worrying about it. Gerry said it wasn’t my responsibility. I kept telling Gerry to get Liam out of the youth groups.

‘I thought of handing out leaflets’

“Gerry has now said he had to tread carefully in order to protect my anonymity. Again, that’s rubbish. I’d have gone with Gerry to these youth clubs and told them what Liam had done but Gerry never gave me that option either.

“I didn’t know which groups Liam was in but I even thought of standing on the streets of west Belfast handing out leaflets saying ‘Liam Adams is a paedophile’. I thought of writing it up as graffiti on the walls. That’s how desperate I was.”

In her final meeting with Gerry Adams in late 2005, Áine says: “I told him that I wouldn’t let my kids attend any children’s or youth group in west Belfast in case Liam was involved. ‘Would you feel comfortable letting your wee granddaughter go somewhere Liam was working?’ I asked Gerry. I could see the rage in his eyes when I said that.”

When Áine finally found out last year that Liam had worked in Clonard youth centre, located in the grounds of Clonard Monastery, she and her uncle, Bob Corrigan, visited the centre. They spoke to a senior youth worker there whose name is known to the Sunday Tribune. “We brought down the police charge sheet listing the abuse charges Liam was facing. The youth worker was stunned. He said he’d worked with Liam for four years and he wasn’t aware of this. He said no one had ever informed him.”

The next day, Áine and her partner, Tony Dahlstrom, met a Clonard priest whose name is known to the Sunday Tribune. “He also said he’d worked with Liam and he was shocked. Nobody had ever told him about Liam’s past. This doesn’t fit with Gerry Adams’ claim that he’d informed Clonard about Liam,” Áine says.

While Clonard were “totally sympathetic”, Áine claims a person she approached last year in a youth project in Beechmount, where Liam had previously worked, did not respond positively. This person’s name is known to the Sunday Tribune.

“Their attitude was hostile,” Áine says. “They said Liam was innocent until proven guilty. I asked them if they’d employ Liam again and they said they would. I said I wanted to speak to the parents of the children Liam had worked with. That request was refused. I told the person in Beechmount, ‘If you hear in future that anything has happened to any child, remember my name’.”

Who speaks for this region?

John Hewitt sums up best the politics which has us in this mess. It’s the politics of sectarian deals and republican rhetoric.

It’s also the politics of the DUP and Sinn Fein and it was alive and kicking the mid sixties. Writing in 1964, five years before the troubles broke out and 34 years before the Good Friday Agreement Hewitt accurately diagnosed the problem. Four and a half decades years later it is surly time to understand that Northern and Irish are not mutually exclusive identities but layers of a distinct Irish regional identity.

By trying to waken folk to the concept of the Region, it seemed to me the necessary step to prize Ulster loose from the British anchorage: then and only then, when free in ideology, the unity with the other part of our island could be realised and established. The North cannot be invaded, and taken by force in the Republic: if simply outvoted by a nationalist majority resentment would remain, but, realising themselves for what they are for the first time, not Britain’s pensioners or stranded Englishmen and Scots, being instead a group living long enough in Ireland to have the air in their blood, the landscape in their bones, and the history in their hearts, and so, a special kind of Irish themselves, they could with grace make the transition to federal unity.

I always maintained that our loyalties had an order to Ulster, to Ireland, to the British Archipelago, to Europe; and that anyone who skipped a step or missed a link falsified the total. The Unionists missed out Ireland: the Northern Nationalists (The Green Tories) couldn’t see the Ulster under their feet; the Republicans missed out both Ulster and the Archipelago; and none gave any heed to Europe at all. Now, perhaps, willy nilly bundled in the European rump of the Common Market, clearer ideas of our regional and national allegiances and responsibilities may emerge.

I take my seat in the Assembly tomorrow. I go there to make this region work because a strong North will mean and strong Ireland.

The question of whether there will be a united Ireland is settled, it will happen when the majority of this region want it to. The Good Friday Agreement with its Assembly, North South Bodies and East West arragements builds on Hewitt’s vision.

The issue now therefore is what type of New Ireland we want to build; one which includes a strong reconciled North reflecting the true diversity of our united island or a unitary state which could struggle to reflect our island and its people? 

Hewitt offered old unionism and nationalism a new perspective. They ignored it in the sixties and 3500 people died. Today it appears our political leaders remain stuck in their aging minds, prisoners of their past and unwilling or afraid to explore the potential of a new North.

I look forward to reading the words of the great Belfast poet into the record of the Assembly. The question is whether there are members of the other parties represented there who will be listening or interested?

Politics fails (again). Now bring in the governments

The DUP – Sinn Fein spat has become a splat.

As others have noted it will nearly certainly take the British and Irish Government intervention to wet nurse the big two towards some sort of settlement. I can see the big house, the media stakeout, the other parties being brought  in to provide some perspective. High wire, high octane (or maybe not) and all because our big two parties don’t do power sharing. Stand off and flag waving seem to be more their thing – real mature!

I spent yesterday afternoon with a group of upper and lower sixth form girls talking about politics. These teenagers asked me questions about education, identity, and the Good Friday Agreement. The issue of parading or policing wasn’t brought up, nor were parades. It seems these young ladies are very interested in politics but not at all interested in the issues which SF and the DUP are now threatening the institutions over.

Waking up as an MLA for the first time it is clear that the real gulf in our politics is between the big two parties of the past and the hopes and aspirations of our young northerners.

The challenge for all of us is to close it.