Newton Emerson: Integration, immigration and lobster liberation – the week that was in the news

DUP education minister Paul Givan has turned down a request by Northern Ireland’s largest school to transform from state to integrated status.

Fewer than 3 per cent of pupils at Bangor Academy are Catholic, so Givan’s decision is rational and much criticism of it has been excessive.

Long-standing Department of Education criteria require an integrated school to achieve 10 per cent minority new enrolment in its first year and demonstrate it can reach 30 per cent total enrolment long term.

This is a high bar in Bangor, with a Catholic population of 12 per cent. In fact, Bangor is so overrun with Protestants they comprise one-third of the pupils at St Columbanus’ College, an achievement of which the CCMS is enormously proud.

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The law merely specifies the mix of pupils at an integrated school must be “reasonable”, leaving the department to define thresholds. It might be asked if greater flexibility could be shown in areas with large Protestant or Catholic majorities.

Ultimately, the question this story raises is whether integration should be more about ethos and less about numbers. Mixed neighbourhoods are often a state of mind, not a headcount. Could schools be the same?

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The new UK electronic visa waiver applies from this week to all non-Europeans, meaning American tourists will require one when crossing the border into Northern Ireland. It will extend to Europeans in April.

The government has always said there will be no enforcement of the scheme within Northern Ireland, making it a de facto sea border for eastbound travellers. Stopping illegal immigration into Britain is the true objective.

[ The UK must dismantle its new Brexit tourism border - The Irish News viewOpens in new window ]

So if nobody will be checking the waivers, how many tourists will bother to get them?

It can be presumed most tour companies will comply. The online application process is cheap, simple and quick, comparable to the US’s ESTA programme, so many independent travellers should comply as well.

However, it is fair to suspect blind eyes will be turned, to paraphrase Bertie Ahern’s prediction about post-Brexit trade. If this becomes open contempt for the system – with social media videos of ‘illegal crossings’, for example – it will challenge the government’s laissez faire approach.

The focus on tourism ignores a more serious issue: will illegal immigrants now decide to apply for asylum in Northern Ireland, rather than risk being caught en route to Britain?

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Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson has returned to work, having been absent since last June due to illness.

Last September, a man accepted a caution for common assault following an incident at an address linked to Anderson 12 months previously.

That incident is still being investigated by West Midlands Police, who were called in by the PSNI in October 2023 to avoid a conflict of interest – the PSNI should not be investigating its own watchdog.

In November 2023, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher told the Policing Board he expected the investigation to conclude “in weeks rather than months”.

That was 14 months ago. All it has achieved so far is to shut down commentary on an increasingly preposterous situation. Both police forces are even using the ‘ongoing investigation’ excuse to refuse to speculate on when the investigation might end.

With a caution accepted and Anderson back at her desk, it should be safe for the media to fully report on the incident, without waiting to see if West Midlands Police have anything to add.

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The number of Irish passports issued in Northern Ireland last year rose 4 per cent to 118,000. Sinn Féin MP Daire Hughes has responded by calling for a “much-needed” Irish passport office north the border, saying “it just makes sense to deal with the demand”.

This is a back-to-front argument. Delivering so many passports through the existing system of online and Post Office applications proves a dedicated office is unnecessary.

If Sinn Féin wants an office as a flag-planting exercise, it should have the courage to say so.

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An out-of-town retail park was granted planning permission in Enniskillen, despite concerns about its impact on the town centre, in large part because the plans included a cinema and bowling alley. But the developer now wants to replace those leisure facilities with a supermarket.

This is a familiar tale. To take an example from personal memory, the Meadows centre in Portadown was meant to have a cinema when it was approved 30 years ago but only a supermarket appeared.

Planning permission does not automatically require that everything approved must be built. Councils and planners can impose a requirement but developers have been given little reason to fear permission will be withdrawn over last-minute changes.

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With so much debate across Ireland and the world about what constitutes the far right, Sinn Féin should realise this is not a great time for it to celebrate the 1957 so-called Brookeborough Raid, whose most famous republican casualty, Sean South, was an antisemitic ultra-nationalist and probable fascist. Were he alive today, he would be screaming “Sinn Féin are traitors” outside a refugee centre.

Yet the party still turned out en masse for the annual commemoration in Fermanagh, with MLA Jemma Dolan tweeting it is “always a good way to start off the New Year”. Better ways are surely available.

Also present was MP Pat Cullen, confirming a pattern with Sinn Féin. It brings in fresh faces to raise the party up, then insists on dragging them down.

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The sense that environmental protection in Northern Ireland is somewhat capricious has been beautifully illustrated by a press release from the Department of the Environment, Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

It boasts about how inspectors on a routine check of retail premises in south Belfast measured 130 live lobsters, found 19 to be under minimum size, returned those alive to the sea and the business was fined £643.

The contrast with how farms are allowed to illegally pollute waterways is surreal. It conjures up an image of Salvador Dali’s lobster telephone – perhaps that is what the department uses to give farmers one week’s notice of an inspection.

By agreement with the Ulster Farmers Union, there are no unannounced routine checks for the sons of the soil.

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