Gerry Darby, manager of the Lough Neagh Partnership community organisation, has said domestic water charges must be considered to modernise the sewerage system, despite being “political dynamite”.
This courageous attempt to shift the parameters of the argument is unlikely to succeed. Sinn Féin will never agree to water charges and the DUP is only too happy to hide behind Sinn Féin.
Darby added the only alternatives are cutting spending elsewhere or asking Westminster for more money, but there is another option: the developer levy promised by Sinn Féin infrastructure minister John O’Dowd.
While the idea has its flaws, it is the only politically workable solution yet proposed. Environmental campaigners should hold O’Dowd to it and ensure it is not a diversion, as the party is suspiciously reluctant to promote it.
The very least we should expect from Sinn Féin is that it supports Sinn Féin policy.
- Newton Emerson: Sinn Féin’s explanation for moving Conor Murphy doesn’t add upOpens in new window
- Newton Emerson: Subsidising university fees is the problem, not the solutionOpens in new window
- Newton Emerson: The Department for Infrastructure is failing – is it simply too big to function?Opens in new window
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More use could be made of the political power of the angling lobby to help Lough Neagh and address water pollution in general.
In 2023, invasive zebra mussels spread from the lough into the Movanagher fish farm near Ballymoney, from where the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs restocks Northern Ireland’s public angling estate. The department has suspended movement from the farm ever since.
It claims to still be restocking from other sources but many anglers feel short changed. Alliance minister Andrew Muir has missed a trick by not cutting licence and permit fees and getting anglers onside for more enforcement by his department’s Environment Agency.
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Transgender issues have proved awkward for Sinn Féin and Alliance over the past year. Unexpectedly, the DUP is now in a similar predicament. It controls the Department of Education, where guidelines permit schools to decide if pupils can receive counselling without their parents being informed. This is an irregular circumstance - in Britain, a medical professional usually makes the decision.
Concerns have been expressed by a women’s rights group and by the TUV that the guidelines place gender-confused children at risk. However, DUP education minister Paul Givan has so far been reluctant to comment. The News Letter has suggested he has a “wider concern” about “the principle of school autonomy on issues such as this”. It is fair to suspect that concern encompasses religious ethos in pastoral care.
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Westminster’s cross-party Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is to hold an inquiry into how public services here are funded. This will be a follow-up to an inquiry it completed last year during the term of the previous government. That helped put the concept of the ‘fiscal floor’ into the mainstream, creating a new consensus on setting Stormont’s block grant.
We now have a Labour government, a Labour chair of the committee and a Sinn Féin finance minister in a restored executive, with everyone committed to introducing a fiscal floor arrangement. So will that minister, Caoimhe Archibald, attend or testify to the inquiry? It will be a poor look for everyone, herself included, if she does not.
Read more: Brian Feeney: Calling for Sinn Féin to end abstentionism is a distraction from the big picture
Attendance should not be considered a breach of Westminster abstentionism, as Archibald is not an MP. A precedent has already been established. In 2013, Sinn Féin gave public evidence to the committee when it held a session at Stormont.
The party said it would consider doing the same at Westminster but nothing was heard of this again - souring political relationships from that year onwards cannot have helped.
As relationships have allegedly improved, attendance should be reconsidered. The committee could help by arranging another session at Stormont.
Read more: Alex Kane: Time has come for Sinn Féin to take its seats in Westminster
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The Take Back the City group has renewed its call to build social housing on the former Mackies site in west Belfast. Most of the 25-acre site is zoned for a greenway and industrial use. However, shortage of land is not the constraint on new social housing. The bottlenecks are money, infrastructure and planning.
The most plausible route to delivering social housing on the Mackies site would be to sell most of it to a private developer and require one-fifth of everything they build to be social and affordable, in line with Belfast City Council’s planning policy since 2023.
Read more: Evicted single mother urges Stormont to build houses on vacant Mackie’s factory site
Instead, Take Back the City just keeps pointing at an empty patch of land and demanding it be entirely filled with social and affordable housing, without explaining how to pay for it. Credulous reporting of this campaign is becoming as bizarre as the campaign itself.
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The DUP and Sinn Féin are disputing who is responsible for childcare. The DUP has accused Sinn Féin economy minister Conor Murphy of failing to spend £2 million allocated to support childcare providers. The Department for the Economy denies it was allocated any money and has added it “does not have a policy remit over childcare”.
Read more: Northern Ireland needs its own model for affordable childcare, Assembly told
On this latter point, it is splitting hairs. Childcare may be the responsibility of the DUP-controlled Department of Education but supporting childcare providers as businesses falls under the Department for the Economy. It already funds training schemes specifically for the sector.
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Queen Elizabeth expressed relief that Northern Ireland’s “silly marching business” had been less troublesome than expected when the Irish ambassador visited her on July 25 2000, according to newly-released Irish state papers.
Orange leaders and some unionists have found this so upsetting they have questioned the veracity of the report. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs is certainly capable of dishonesty, even to itself, but there is no reason to disbelieve this particular note. In reality, it lets the Orange Order off lightly.
Read more: Queen Elizabeth critical of Orange Order marching season, state papers reveal
“Silly” is the mildest rebuke of the marching season imaginable, especially when voiced on the sixth summer of the Drumcree dispute. The July fortnight that year still witnessed serious rioting, with 88 police officers injured.
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Stormont papers from 2001 show Sinn Féin lobbied for public funding for an Islamic religious school in Belfast and wanted Islam to be included in the school curriculum.
Only strict secularists could legitimately object to this, given the privileged role of the Churches in Northern Ireland’s education system. Yet predictably and amusingly, all four Churches objected - and in a manner that almost parodied their own stereotypes.
Read more: Report reveals ‘lack of inclusion and transparency’ in religious practice in primary schools
According to Stormont officials, the Catholic Church “bristled, citing a problem with ‘catechetical methodology’”. The Church of Ireland warned privately not to upset the Catholics. The Methodists told the education minister they supported diversity in the curriculum but then refused to put it in writing. The Presbyterians refused to say anything at all.
