The PSNI has engaged in absurd back-pedalling over an intelligence assessment on Sinn Féin and the IRA.
Asked last week by Jamie Bryson if a 2015 report still stands, the PSNI replied it did. This caused several media outlets to repeat the report’s findings that the IRA still exists, is involved in criminality and controls Sinn Féin.
These stories were entirely predictable – there was similar coverage when the PSNI last confirmed the assessment in 2021. But it seems the PSNI did not predict them, given its panicked reaction. It suddenly said its reply had been “misconstrued”, without explaining how, then refused to say any more.
Intelligence assessments are made continuously and confidential reports are produced regularly. In 2020, the BBC got hold of one from two years earlier on loyalists, which is also presumed to still stand.
The 2015 assessment was unique because it was commissioned by the secretary of state following two IRA-linked murders and made public to head off a possible collapse of Stormont.
It was a rare moment when constructive ambiguity had to be suspended, but the moment passed and we have returned to our sophisticated peace process norm of not letting too much daylight in on magic. Alas, for that same reason, the PSNI cannot unambiguously say so.
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A hearing of Stormont’s Executive Office committee, which oversees the department of the first and deputy first ministers, has been widely branded a farce.
First minister Michelle O’Neill attended to answer questions on child protection, following recent scandals in Sinn Féin. However, she declined to answer anything not strictly within the remit of her office.
Some of her refusals were debatable, in particular declining to discuss the employment of now-convicted paedophile Michael McMonagle, who passed through multiple offices. But Alliance committee chair Paula Bradshaw took an equally tight view of remits and ruled this was a matter for other commissions that employ assembly staff and uphold the ministerial code.
All this legalistic playing it by the book might have been defensible were it not for the glaring absence of Emma Little-Pengelly. The DUP deputy first minister issued a statement beforehand saying the hearing was a matter between Sinn Féin and the committee, adding that O’Neill “will be attending as first minister but on her own”.
So which was it? If the former, O’Neill should not have been there. If the latter, Little-Pengelly should have been there as well.
Any back-room deal to ignore the rules on treating the first ministers’ office as a joint office will come back to haunt us all.
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Alliance justice minister Naomi Long has told the assembly she can do no more to address her budget shortfall. “We are now at the point where all options have been fully exhausted,” she said.
Most parts of the criminal justice system are run by independent agencies, by design, so the department is unusually limited in the levers it can pull.
It could still try harder to cajole those agencies into action. Since 2016, the Courts Service has been urged by its independent oversight body to set up an English-type ‘traffic court’ that could take 40 per cent of cases out of the system. Nothing has been done.
The department is directly responsible for legal aid. In 2010, Alliance justice minister David Ford proposed channelling this budget away from solicitors and barristers towards community-based ‘legal clinics’. Is that idea not worth revisiting?
[ Newton Emerson: Do we really need a department of justice?Opens in new window ]
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One of the themes to emerge from the still-escalating scandal over the arrests of journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey is intense hostility within the PSNI to the office of the Police Ombudsman.
That office has effectively been vacant since September last year, following an incident at the home of ombudsman Marie Anderson. Last October, chief constable Jon Boutcher asked West Midlands Police to conduct an investigation.
Another theme to emerge from the Birney and McCaffrey arrests is that bringing in an external police force hardly guarantees success. Last November, Boutcher told the Policing Board he expected the investigation to conclude “in weeks rather than months”. That was 11 months ago.
The longer this continues, the more the perception could grow that having the ombudsman’s office in limbo suits some only too well.
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Maternity services in Northern Ireland require a complete overhaul, according to a report by Prof Mary Renfrew, a midwife and academic at the University of Dundee.
The report was commissioned by the Department of Health on the recommendation of a coroner, following the death of a baby in Lagan Valley hospital in 2017.
Prof Renfrew’s 32 recommendations are extensive but she has no apparent concerns about the impact of ‘natural childbirth’ ideology, the near-mystical opposition in parts of the medical profession to painkillers and caesarians.
Inquiries into maternity scandals in England found this to be a primary driver of needless death and injury. It would be surprising if Northern Ireland had entirely escaped the same problem.
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Twenty of the 45 properties within Belfast’s stalled ‘Tribeca’ scheme have rates exceptions, The Irish News has discovered.
Although full rates can be charged on vacant commercial premises, there are several exemptions, such as a building being listed. The rates agency recently inspected Tribeca’s properties to check exemptions remain valid. SDLP assembly leader Matthew O’Toole has asked for regular inspections and questioned the example of one charity shop in a large building exempting the whole building.
More than revenue is at stake. Tribeca’s owner, Castlebrooke Investments, is a small company that might struggle to pay the full £2 million rates bill. That prospect could finally spur it to develop the site, or sell it to someone who will.
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A plague of biting insects in Ballykelly has been identified as mosquitos.
Council environmental health officers had initially suspected bird fleas or midges. The story recalls a warning in July by environmental scientist Dr Les Gornall that the Lough Neagh fly has disappeared due to pollution and could be replaced by “Scottish biting midges or mosquitoes”.
Ballykelly is 30 miles from Lough Neagh but farming and sewage are degrading the environment everywhere. A report from a senior Northern Ireland Water official has warned Belfast Lough is approaching a similar ecological tipping point to Lough Neagh.
Perhaps something will be done once civil servants in North Down can see the disaster from their own doorsteps.