Why has the big stooshie blown up in Northern Ireland in the past few weeks over the devolution of policing and justice?
There may be a clue in two stories that have been going on in Northern Ireland, one fairly well reported and one being touched on only by a few.
In the DUP case we have the case of the Robinsons, probably something you’ve read about in most of our papers as it has some of the major requirements to being a “good story” for the media. Now we see that despite standing back for supposedly six weeks while all the hoo-haa was sorted out Peter Robinson is back in the limelight as Sam Smyth says in the Irish Independent
TWO weeks ago, Peter Robinson looked like a beaten docket, taking quality time out to care for his ailing, cheating wife while he considered his position as first minister for Northern Ireland.
Yesterday, he was strutting around Stormont as born-again king, awaiting the Taoiseach and British prime minister, who had dropped everything to meet him.
His ace card was a demand that the Parades Commission be abolished as a pay-off for agreeing to the devolution of policing and justice.
Robinson has greedily seized back all the authority of his office as first minister.
In Sinn Fein’s case we have the lesser known but potentiallymore damaging story of the Cover-Up of the fact that Gerry Adam’s brother is a Paedophile and that other family members including Gerry’s father were also accused and the abuse that he carried out within his own family.
This story has not quite got to the National presses throughout the UK but has caused considerable embarrassment to Sinn Fein in Ireland.
The Tribune in Ireland has exposed much of the sordid story, but much has still to be revealed and none of it reflects particularly well on Gerry Adam’s or Sinn Fein. A little idea of what has been going on can be seen from this extract.
It all began on the Friday before Christmas, when those not out at office parties watched Áine Tyrell on UTV’s Insight programme detail how her father, Liam Adams, had allegedly raped her from the age of four. It was a horrific story, but nobody could have guessed the huge political cover-up that lay behind it.
Gerry Adams appeared on the programme saying he had believed Áine from the moment in 1987 that she told him what his brother had done. He had always supported her, he said. Tyrell’s interpretation differed. She insisted he had failed her.
But it wasn’t Tyrell’s words that meant this story was far from over. It was what Gerry Adams did and didn’t tell reporter Chris Moore that would lead to claims of a huge cover-up by the Sinn Féin president.
Adams told Moore that, after hearing Tyrell’s allegations, he’d been estranged from his brother for 15 years. Two days later, the Sunday Tribune proved that was far from true. We published photographs of the Sinn Féin president at Liam’s wedding to his second wife almost 10 years after he had been told Liam was a paedophile.
To attend a family funeral, where Liam might also have been present, would have been understandable. But to attend Liam’s wedding – to stand smiling and relaxed with him at the reception wearing a green Saoirse ribbon for IRA prisoners – was another matter. Gerry Adams obviously had a very odd understanding of the word ‘estrangement’.
But that wasn’t all we revealed. Gerry Adams never told UTV’s Chris Moore – on tape or in any pre-recording conversations – that his brother Liam had been in Sinn Féin. His account to Moore was neither honest nor transparent.
Two days later, the Sunday Tribune revealed that Liam Adams had been a high-profile Sinn Féin member in Dundalk in the 1990s. So senior was Liam Adams in Sinn Féin that he had sought the nomination to be the party’s Co Louth candidate in the 1997 Dáil election, but had failed. The nomination was secured by local veteran republican Owenie Hanratty at a selection convention in the Imperial Hotel in October 1996.
And we exposed something else. UTV had reported that Liam Adams had worked for youth projects in Belfast. The Sunday Tribune revealed he’d also worked for a youth project in the Muirhevnamor estate in Dundalk.
So we have two big scandals involving high profile members of the opposing parties, both of which reflect poorly on them as we progress towards power-sharing in Northern Ireland and the General Election.
What could be better than an even bigger story to eclipse these two.
So now we have a story that has attracted big Media coverage in both the UK and Ireland. We have Prime Ministers who have used it as an excuse to avoid facing up to bad news and as Smyth reports
We have been here before, of course. The world holds its breath while the political leaders in the North are cajoled and coaxed by the two governments.
Through the years, a US president or secretary of state would lard the political leaders with flattery and money. Now and then, comforting noises and a financial contribution would emanate from the EU.
Yesterday, the panic button was pressed again when Brian Cowen and Gordon Brown flew from London to Belfast — same old routine with a new cast.
Ian Paisley, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern are history and Gerry Adams was standing behind McGuinness, who stood centre-stage with Robinson, Cowen and Brown.
Last night, there was hope that the new players could defuse the first crisis of 2010 but old hatreds and distrust die hard in the North.
The governments in Dublin and London look back nostalgically to the Chuckle Brothers who morphed into the Brothers Grimm when Robinson replaced Paisley beside McGuinness.
Perhaps I’m being cynical but it seems to me that it’s very convenient that these issues should now have blown up.
Perhaps the only one really celebrating has been Gordon Brown, he has been able to use this whole sorry story to perform his Macavity the Cat act to allow him to dodge the rather awkward GDP figures.
Sam Smyth: Same old story in North but with a different cast – Analysis, Opinion – Independent.ie.
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