Undaunted by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to one of its ministers meeting the Loyalist Communities Council last month, a second DUP minister has now found time in his diary for the paramilitary umbrella body.
That education minister Paul Givan and communities minister Gordon Lyons, whose turn it was to play host to the LCC on Tuesday, believe the representatives of the Red Hand Commando, UVF and UDA should enjoy such privileged access will trouble a great many people across the community.
This includes those living in loyalist districts where paramilitaries continue to recruit, exploit, coerce, intimidate and deal drugs.
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Mr Lyons and Mr Givan should reacquaint themselves with their executive’s own draft programme for government, which admits that “paramilitary harm continues to affect too many adults and young people” and estimates that paramilitarism costs the economy at least £750 million annually.
This weekend might mark the 30th anniversary of the loyalist ceasefire - a genuinely landmark development in the peace process - but in far too many ways, to borrow a phrase, the loyalist paramilitaries haven’t gone away, you know.
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The DUP has yet to give a plausible reason why the LCC gets to meet its ministers on what is beginning to look like a regular basis.
Perhaps it believes that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ paramilitaries. Edwin Poots has certainly talked about how they are “little more than old men’s clubs”, a grotesquely generous assessment.
The LCC was established almost a decade ago with the noble intent of helping the loyalist paramilitaries put themselves out of business. But this transitioning, as it’s euphemistically known, has failed, and it is difficult to know what the LCC has contributed to wider positive community and political developments in recent years. It has no electoral mandate and it is not clear who precisely it represents or what support it enjoys among the communities it claims to represent. If it can’t demonstrate its bona fides, it’s time the LCC was transitioned out of existence.
The DUP has yet to give a plausible reason why the LCC gets to meet its ministers on what is beginning to look like a regular basis
The LCC used the platform of its meeting with Mr Givan to attack plans for Irish language schools in east Belfast, a position given a gossamer veneer of credibility precisely because it seemed to have VIP access to the minister.
This week’s meeting with Mr Lyons allowed the LCC to share its apparent expertise in social housing. It is not clear if the role loyalist paramilitaries continue to play in intimidating people from their homes formed part of the discussion.
Mr Lyons’s enthusiasm for meeting the LCC contrasts unfavourably with the length of time it took to attend a GAA event. The DUP should reflect on which organisations it chooses to platform and ask itself why paramilitaries still plague loyalist districts.
