Newton Emerson: GAA’s estimate of its €2.87 billion economic and social value too conservative

The GAA has presented academic research to Stormont that estimates Gaelic games generate €2.87 billion of economic and social value across Ireland every year. This is exceptionally conservative for a study of this type.

It finds a health benefit of just €31.06 million, for example, although ‘subjective wellbeing’ adds another €556.48m.

The GAA has over a half a million members and over half of them are regularly involved in games, so the report is claiming a year’s exercise has a direct health benefit of around €100. Perhaps if your game is darts.

The GAA could learn from the Law Society of Northern Ireland, which commissioned research last month claiming Stormont’s £100m legal aid budget generates £821m of social value. It attributed a quarter of this to the health benefits of not having to worry about your legal bills.

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Alliance has published a set of proposals to help private tenants. It has done so more in protest at executive inaction than in expectation of progress.

Controls on rent rises, evictions and tenancy lengths are unlikely to get through Stormont for years, if ever. Landlords have become a significant electoral constituency in their own right.

However, Alliance’s proposal to reduce short-term holiday lets could be implemented tomorrow. In Northern Ireland, unusually, such lets must obtain planning permission, certify with Tourism NI as self-catering accommodation and meet the regulatory standards of a small hotel. Failure to comply is a criminal offence with a £2,500 fine.

There are just under 4,000 certified self-catering businesses in Northern Ireland, yet Airbnb alone has 6,533 listings, of which 83% are entire properties. So comparing just one website to the official register should reveal thousands of offences, highlight millions in potential fines and hopefully put a significant number of properties back into use as permanent homes. As a guide to how much housing might be released, Airbnb is listing property equivalent to the entire city of Armagh.

Perhaps this could not be done overnight: Tourism NI’s inspectorate is small and already overburdened. But nor is it a difficult task: lawbreakers are literally advertising their crimes.

Read more: Airbnb issues warning over holiday scams fuelled by AI and social media

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Stormont’s Department of Health has recruited a senior NHS England official, Mike Farrar, to be its new top civil servant. External recruitment for these posts, known as permanent secretaries, is still rare and reflects the urgency of improving health administration.

Farrar will be paid £188,000, more than the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and half as much again as the first ministers. The SDLP has condemned this as “eye-watering” but it would be a bargain if Farrar delivers results.

Of more concern is that there has been no reported attempt to link his salary to performance. Farrar should have been provided with a list of objectives to meet. Why not put figures to them, as would happen at his level in the private sector?

Last year, Downing Street announced a trial of performance related pay for senior civil servants in Britain. This was denounced as “divisive” by their union, the First Division Association, which is an encouraging sign. A response that ridiculous reveals serious concern it might work.

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The Clonoe ambush inquest continues to generate reaction, almost all of it back to front. The finding of unlawful killing of four IRA members by the SAS is correct by the standards of the state and absurd by the standards of the IRA, yet unionists, Conservative MPs and parts of the UK media are outraged, while republicans think there can be no other conclusion.

What has become lost in the noise that the coroner primarily found he had not been told the truth. Ambushes are permitted under European human rights law but the state has persistently refused to admit the ambush was an ambush, so the events of 1992 cannot be judged in those terms.

Read more: Clonoe inquest: Tribal response shouldn’t obscure the facts - The Irish News view

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DUP communities minister Gordon Lyons has ordered his department to resume publicising the names of convicted benefit fraudsters as part of a “zero-tolerance approach” to the issue. The practice was stopped in 2020 by his Sinn Féin predecessor, Deirdre Hargey.

Lyons told the assembly benefit fraud is “not just a financial issue” but “also a moral one”. For Stormont, the issue is almost entirely moral as it does not get to keep the savings - Westminster pays the benefit bill separately to the block grant.

Any cheating of the system is certainly wrong and has wider costs for everyone. However, the cases previously publicised tended to involve somewhat pathetic individuals committing simple misrepresentation. There was little sign of the Social Security Agency investigating benefit fraud by paramilitaries and other organised crime gangs. Official reports dating back decades have warned such gangs are heavily involved in benefit fraud and have urged the agency to put more focus on it.

Most moral codes point to devoting resources to the worst offenders.

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The wheels are falling off Westminster’s assisted dying bill, with reports suggesting a majority of MPs may oppose it at its next Commons vote due to the removal of promised safeguards.

This is a credit to the political instincts of Alliance’s Sorcha Eastwood. Most Northern Ireland MPs abstained from the previous vote because the bill applies only to England and Wales, but Eastwood made a point of registering her disapproval.

The only other Northern Ireland MP to vote was former SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, who backed the bill.

Read more: Assisted dying Bill scrutiny ‘chaotic’, say Labour opponents

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I wondered here last week how Liz Kimmins, Sinn Féin’s new infrastructure minister, would approach her predecessor John O’Dowd’s policy to fund NI Water through a levy on new housing.

Sinn Féin itself has been oddly quiet about the idea, raising suspicions the party is not serious or is nervous of objections from developers.

In her first assembly appearance as minister this week, Kimmins vowed to “build on” O’Dowd’s policy and assured MLAs she is “exploring options for developer contributions”.

Read more: When will Sinn Féin actually support Sinn Féin policy on water charges? - Newton Emerson

Her department repeated this in a ministerial press release.

But there was still no statement from Sinn Féin - not even a social media post.

This is becoming bizarre. Although a developer levy has its flaws, it is the only politically deliverable solution to the vexed, vital question of water funding that anyone has yet devised. Sinn Féin should be proclaiming it from the rooftops.

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