The DUP has been rather sour about the Irish government’s €800 million Shared Island initiative funding. Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson welcomed support for “genuine cross-border” infrastructure but added “it is not the job or the responsibility of the Republic’s government to provide financial support for the provision of public services and general Northern Ireland infrastructure”.
The Republic has not claimed otherwise. Shared Island funding is specifically for cross-border projects and Tánaiste Michael Martin, who created the initiative, repeated this week it is for “capital, not current” spending.
DUP sourness is in contrast to Sinn Féin sweetness. As recently as last October, leader Mary Lou McDonald was still dismissing the Shared Island initiative as “not a substitute for what actually needs to happen”.
Her party has previously called the initiative “deeply disappointing” and criticised it for not mentioning a united Ireland. Yet Sinn Féin has embraced the €800 million without reservation. Stormont finance minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald heralded it as “a catalyst for change”.
This looks like another classic case of unionism not realising it has a win and republicans moving swiftly on from a loss.
**
Asked by RTÉ about the cost of Casement Park, Micheál Martin said: “It’s never wise to speculate on the price of any project before it goes to tender because very often the speculated cost could become the floor price.”
This is obviously correct, yet when Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris gave the same answer to a Westminster committee the day before, it caused consternation.
Border poll campaign group Ireland’s Future tweeted: “London looks like it is preventing Casement from being built as a sop to those who can not accept the change that is taking place across society.”
🚨Recent developments regarding Casement Park are a clear example of why Northern Ireland doesn’t work for all of its citizens.
— Ireland's Future - Todhchaí na hÉireann (@IrelandsFuture) February 21, 2024
🚨London looks like it is preventing Casement from being built as a sop to those who can not accept the change that is taking place across society. https://t.co/p7fxLBXfya
This is nonsense: London is committed to the stadium but still involved in discussions over the bill. Dublin was canny to put its €50 million contribution on the table, leaving others to haggle over the balance.
**
Among the many absurdities of Northern Ireland arguing over sport is the extreme anti-athleticism of the population. Two-thirds of adults and a quarter of children are overweight and 70 per cent of adults never exercise.
The Department of Health says this is costing the economy £425 million a year. However, it is citing a 2009 study in the British Medical Journal, so the figure today could easily be two or three times larger. For comparison, a 2016 Ulster University study, much quoted by the Alliance Party, put the cost of duplicating public services due to sectarian division at between £400m and £830m a year. Our sedentary lifestyles are now almost certainly more expensive than our segregated lifestyles.
The department will finish consultation next week on a 10-year anti-obesity strategy that will seek to improve diets and increase physical activity through sport and active travel - walking, cycling and using public transport. At least that will provide an answer to the criticism that Casement has nowhere to park.
**
Parking is also an issue at Newry Cathedral. It is advising parishioners to object to plans for a new council civic centre on an adjacent strip of land, claiming Mass-goers need both the surface and multi-storey car park currently on the site.
The council says there will be more parking once its building is complete but that should be beside the point. Church parking cannot be a priority use for public land in a city centre as it is only used for a few hours a week. It is particularly absurd in this instance as there is another multi-storey car park 100 metres away.
Cathedral authorities are not helping their case be adding that the civic centre should not be “in close proximity of this... Grade A listed building”.
How did a hideous multi-storey car park get there?
**
Unionists sometimes accuse Mary Lou McDonald of overshadowing Michelle O’Neill at Stormont. There was an odd imbalance in the opposite direction when US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called to “welcome the restoration of the power-sharing government”.
This was reported by the State Department, Washington’s equivalent of the Foreign Office, as Blinken speaking to “First Minister Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, and Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson”.
No explanation has been offered as to why Donaldson was included. It may be that McDonald excluded herself to avoid more contention over Gaza. Neither Sinn Féin nor the DUP issued statements about a call that both parties would normally boast about receiving.
**
Sue Gray, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s all-powerful chief of staff, has publicly denied she was ever a British spy in Northern Ireland.
The allegation has occasionally been made because she ran a pub in Mayobridge in the 1980s before becoming a senior civil servant at the Cabinet Office. Although this is an unusual career path for a Whitehall mandarin, family connections explain all.
One of the daftest conspiracy theories about Gray ever entertained by a supposedly serious publication is that the pub was a convenient drive to the army base at Ballykinler. Nowhere is a convenient drive to Ballykinler.
**
Sinn Féin economy minister Conor Murphy has set out his economic vision, with an emphasis on improving skills and productivity.
A good place to start would be Belfast Metropolitan College, where over 300 staff have applied for 120 voluntary redundancies. That is one-third of the college’s workforce, most in jobs that should be highly prized. It indicates a troubled organisation and should raise wider alarm about further education, which falls under Murphy’s department.
The sector is crucial to improving skills and productivity, yet for all the lip service paid to its importance, it remains eternally neglected.
**
To be at one unnotified procession is unfortunate. To be at two looks like carelessness.
The PSNI is investigating an unnotified pro-Palestinian demonstration in Derry that was addressed by SDLP leader Colum Eastwood. Two months ago, Mr Eastwood made a fuss after police were obliged to investigate a short walk by Bloody Sunday relatives, on which he was present, after a complaint by Jamie Bryson.
It is a simple matter to notify the Parades Commission and an even simpler matter to check if a parade has been approved. Nobody should consider themselves or their cause too important to do so, given the opportunity it hands others for mischief.
If I were transported back to Portadown at the height of Drumcree, I do not know which I would find more incredible: that the entire parading issue would one day be solved; or that we get a solution, only for it to be undermined by the SDLP.
