A lackadaisical approach to illegal dumping in north Belfast is at odds with the official position of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, part of Stormont’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.
“Waste crime” is something the department takes “very seriously”, according to the executive’s NI Direct website. Noting the health, economic and social issues at stake, the website urges and instructs the public on how to report suspected offences to the agency’s grandly entitled “enforcement branch.”
Unlimited fines and up to five years in prison are promised for offenders.
There are copious offences available, covering requirements to safely transport, treat and dispose of waste and obtain licences for doing so.
Yet when the agency became aware of the public health crisis in north Belfast on June 11, it merely issued a notice to clear the site by July 31. Only media attention appears to have made it take steps to progress this on July 21.
The department now says it will “pursue this case vigorously in the courts” but it is hard to avoid the impression that this is also due to media exposure. Certainly, the culprits seemed to have no fear of being caught.
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The assembly has passed a Sinn Féin motion calling on DUP environment minister Edwin Poots to pass a climate change and biodiversity act within three months, as the situation is an “emergency”. A UUP amendment to create more time was rejected.
Poots was thus able to dismiss the whole thing as “impossible to ask for” and “ridiculous”. Even straightforward legislation at Stormont typically takes two years to pass, with legal requirements for consultation easily swallowing up three months alone. There are serious questions to be asked about the DUP’s intentions on environmental protection but green grandstanding by other parties will not address them.
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Jim Wells has started tilting at windmills. The South Down MLA, who lost the DUP whip two years ago, asked a crowd-pleasing assembly question about ‘constraint payments’ to shut down wind farms when their electricity is not needed.
An answer in the name of DUP economy minister Diana Dodds confirmed payments of £1 million over 20 months, earning sensational front-page headlines about consumers paying wind farms to produce nothing. Wells then demanded the practice stop.
In reality, constraint payments are an inevitable consequence of the inability to store electricity. They are paid to all types of power producers and £1 million is a trivial fee to manage the load on 82 major wind farms supplying a third of our electricity - less than 7 pence per month on the average bill.
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Mystery surrounds a bill passing through Stormont that weakens collective decision making, by lowering the definition of what ministers need to bring before a full executive.
The DUP insisted for years that preventing Sinn Féin ‘solo runs’ was its main achievement at St Andrews, yet it is backing the bill to the hilt.
One explanation could be that in a five-party executive, less collectivity enables a return to two-party stitch-ups. No doubt this will not stop the three small parties receiving a full share of all blame.
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“I would encourage everyone to consider a staycation this year and enjoy the sights, scenes and tastes of Northern Ireland. We must all do what we can to support our local tourist industry.”
So declared Diane Dodds, whose remit covers tourism, at the end of June. One week later, Sinn Féin finance minister Conor Murphy reallocated £20 million towards supporting tourist attractions. A week after that, he was able to announce further tourism funding via chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Yet HMS Caroline, one of Northern Ireland’s premier attractions, is not being allowed to reopen this year by Dodds’s department.
The department has had a deal with the operator, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, to cover any losses.
This is precisely the scenario all the extra funding is for and Sunak has already agreed to fund the museum’s losses elsewhere.
Can Dodds say she is doing all she can to support our local tourism industry?
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Belfast is one of the most deserted post-lockdown cities in the UK, with only 14 per cent of city centre workers returning, according to phone data research published in most British newspapers. They missed the significance of collecting the data on July 8-14, effectively the Twelfth weekend. The truly remarkable finding is that even fewer people were back at work in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Glasgow.
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Addressing a republican gathering in Cullyhanna in 1997, Francie Molloy, then a member of Sinn Féin’s talks team, said if negotiations failed “we simply go back to what we do best.”
The incident caused a memorable controversy, so it could have been seen as ominous when Molloy, now an MP, tweeted last weekend that republicans were “sold a pup with the Good Friday Agreement”.
Or it would have been ominous if Sinn Féin had not rapidly distanced itself from the remark. In a way, Molloy’s prediction was correct. Two decades on, sounding off on twitter is what republicans do best.
