SAOIRSE32

Derry Journal

By Ellen Doherty
Friday 13th January 2006

This time last week Helen Wray was pottering around her Kennedy Place home. It was like any other Friday and Helen was preparing for the weekend and hoping to take a walk into town. Now, one week later Helen is homeless and staying with her daughter temporarily. Her home burned down because, she claims, she allows her daughters to have Catholic boyfriends.

“I’ve learned to accept things like this,” said a tired looking Helen, speaking from her daughter’s home yesterday. “I haven’t been sleeping at all since.” Helen has no doubt as to why she was targeted. ” Its because I allowed my girls to have Catholic friends” she said. As Helen explained, this is not the first time she has her home and family were attacked. She said: “Not so long ago a brick was thrown through my window where my daughter, who was pregnant, was asleep. My daughters were also beaten.” Helen told the Journal that she tried to lead a quiet life in her home in Kennedy place until the fire. “The only people I really spoke to were my neighbours, and apart from this I kept myself to myself” she said. “There were nice people living beside me and I have nothing against any of them. I’m glad none of them were injured in the fire. I wouldn’t like to see any of them hurt.”

Helen’s fifteen year old daughter Nicole suffers from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of several attacks on their home although Helen admitted that last weeks attack was the most serious. “Last Friday I had to call the police because they’d been throwing paving stones at my house all evening. Myself and my daughter were trapped in the house until 1.30 am when the police got us out.”
It was just hours after this when the house, at Kennedy Place, was completely gutted in a fire which police are still investigating and treating as suspicious. There had been speculation that an assault which happened in the area at the same time was linked to the fire. However Helen is adamant that the two incidents are not linked. “I was told that the boy who was assaulted was involved in the fire, but I know he wasn’t. I don’t know him at all but my heart goes out to his parents, it would be totally unfair for him to be linked to this.” Sinn FÈin Councillor Maeve McLaughlin has said that the attitude of community and political leaders in the Fountain Estate as well as the PSNI to the attacking and burning of a family home shows, she alleged, that they are prepared to accept Unionist violence. Councillor McLaughlin accused police and community leaders of failing to offer Mrs Wray adequate protection.

“The attack on the home of Mrs Wray in the Fountain Estate by a Unionist mob who first assaulted her daughters was based on the fact that they were friendly with Catholics” she said. “Questions need to be asked why the PSNI stood back and allowed the mob who attacked the young girls previously to burn the property to the ground. Many of the mob hung around the area for ages while covering their faces with scarves before the house was burned. Not only did they allow this but they also attempted to portray the incident as part of an alleged sectarian attack on a home in the Fountain earlier in the week.

“I would also question the willingness of political and community leaders to confront these Unionist sectarian attitudes. I have not heard the type of condemnation that is deserving of a case of this seriousness but have heard feeble reasons in an attempt to justify it. “All sectarian attacks are wrong and unless we all stand up and face them down together no matter where they emanate from it will continue to happen. The Unionist political and community leaders must stand up and confront the sectarian attitudes that prevail within their areas rather than making lame excuses for these thugs.”

Derry Journal

By Catherine Spence
Friday 13th January 2006

An exciting new development at Altnagelvin Hospital is to result in the allocation of an Acute Medical Services Centre, which will be up and running by April. The move comes following an noted increase in emergency situations at the hospital and, in the past year, incidences of longer trolley waits for patients in Accident and Emergency.

The Centre will be situated in the current Ward 43 and also aims to facilitate better rehabilitation and radically change the way in which patients are treated. The announcement was made at a Liaison Meeting between the Altnagelvin Health and Social Services Trust and the Western Health and Social Services Council, where the panel revealed that the decision was taken after looking closely at how things are done in Liverpool. A member of the Altnagelvin Trust explained: “The Trust looked extensively at a similar situation in Liverpool which was alleviated at the result of implementing an Acute Medical Services Centre. The in-patient bed flow was better, patients experienced shorter bed stays and a clinical through-put team were able to manage beds and effectively unblock the blocks.

“We are now in the process of developing a protocol for our own clinical through-put team, and work is to start immediately on the ward, with an estimated finish date of April.” It was also noted that the system will only work with a good community structure in place, allowing patients to rehabilitate at home following a more stream-lined and efficient stay at Altnagelvin.

SDLP Councillor Seana Hume, who is also a member of the Western Health and Social Services Council, welcomed the move: “The plans for an Acute Services Centre in Altnagelvin are to welcomed and the Trust are to be commended on their move to learn from other hospitals in England.” However, there was bad news for the co-located GP Out-of-Hours scheme which is now to start in approximately two and a half years time, taking a year to complete. Full reports on the Liason Meeting will be in Sunday’s Journal.

Irelandclick

by Francesca Ryan

Two daughters of a West Belfast man who died from an asbestos-related disease have poured their hearts out to the Andersonstown News in a bid to highlight the dangers of the deadly substance.

Colette Devlin and Anne Carson lost their father, Robert Daly, in December 1999, just over a year after he was diagnosed with the deadly asbestos-related disease, mesothelioma.

“My father had moved away to Swansea in his teens to work in the shipyards because there was no work here,” explained Colette. “It was there that he would have been exposed to the asbestos which eventually killed him.”

After almost 75 years of robust health, Robert began to develop aches and pains which left the doctors baffled.

“My father always looked after himself, you would never have taken him for his age. He was a non-smoker and loved walking, my mother often found it hard to keep up with him,” said Anne.

“But then he began complaining about a pain in his side and started losing weight rapidly. I remember he got a flu injection but it didn’t work and he quickly went downhill from then.”

Following a series of trips to the hospital for tests and x-rays, Robert was diagnosed with mesothelioma a year later, in October 1998.

“The weight fell off him, he had no appetite at all and was going through radiotherapy. He developed breathing problems and basically faded away in front of our eyes,” said Colette.

Robert’s tumour grew so big that it pressed against his oesophagus rendering him unable to swallow and for the last few weeks of his life he was connected to a feeding tube as well as the breathing apparatus.

“My father was stunned but just did what the doctors said, there was nothing we could do but watch. The family was absolutely devastated and it was horrific to see him fade away in front of us.”

Even when Robert passed on, the family’s pain continued, as Colette explained.

“We were told that a postmortem would have to be carried out even though everyone knew my father had mesothelioma.

“Two PSNI Land Rovers came and the police interviewed everyone that was in the room when my father died,” said Anne.

“They asked me who was in the room with him and what relation I was, then the Land Rovers escorted the hearse out of the area. The whole district was out watching, it was just a nightmare, the whole episode.”

With eight children between them, the sisters are concerned for the welfare of their children, Robert’s grandchildren, in light of plans to place an asbestos storage facility in West Belfast.

“This is completely irresponsible, it shouldn’t happen and can’t be allowed to happen.

“I was just appalled when I read the article in last week’s Andersonstown News. We may not see the results in the next five years but in 30 or 40 years it could be our kids that develop this horrific illness.

“Accidents can happen and these people [Grove Services] cannot guarantee us that they won’t,” said Colette.

“We are so angry and are willing to do whatever it takes to get this decision reversed.

“Our father could have had another eight to ten years with us, but asbestos killed him.

“It is a killer, it does happen and people need to know this,” added Anne.

Journalist:: Francesca Ryan

Belfast Telegraph

Gerry Adams once boasted of the IRA: “They haven’t gone away, you know”. However, in a few weeks the IMC will produce its latest account on the progress of Provo disbandment. Security expert Brian Rowan reports on what it will say

13 January 2006

The men of the Independent Monitoring Commission have been in Belfast this week as part of the most important phase of work they have so far been asked to undertake.

At the end of this month, the commissioners – Lord Alderdice, John Grieve, Joe Brosnan and Dick Kerr – will produce their latest assessment on the IRA.

They will be in Belfast on January 30 and 31 to finalise that report.

It will not be a magic wand that makes the IRA disappear and sources are dismissive of suggestions that it will be an assessment that gives the republican organisation “a clean bill of health”.

What the Commission will report on is an organisation in “transition” - an organisation that has “fundamentally changed in its mode of operation”.

The IMC is listening to and will be reporting on “all of the complexities of that transition process”. And the tone of this latest assessment will be that things are “heading in the right direction”.

It would be unrealistic – unfair even – to expect anything more definitive at this stage.

The IRA is more than 30 years old in terms of its most recent existence, and 30 weeks have not yet passed since its statement of July last year formally ending its “armed campaign”.

“This is not an army that you can give a demob suit and a cheque and tell it to go home,” one source said.

What that means is that the IRA is still out there. It recently issued a New Year statement. It still has a structure, including a leadership, and it is, to quote a recent intelligence assessment, an organisation in “hibernation”.

The IRA in its new mode is waiting for political progress and for the proof that there is a viable alternative to its “armed struggle”.

It is a very different organisation - different because of the activities it has ceased and because of the decommissioning acts of last September.

These were hugely significant developments, but the DUP is not yet ready to do political business with Sinn Fein, although there now seems to be an inevitability that business will eventually be done.

The question is no longer if but when.

In the meantime, the security landscape is changing - an indication that at the most senior levels of the police and the Army, there is a belief that the republican “war” is over.

When it completes its latest report on the IRA and other paramilitary groups, the IMC will then turn its attention to demilitarisation or normalisation, as others prefer to call it.

At the end of February it will give an assessment of developments - a report on progress measured against the current terrorist threat.

The Army here in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence is finalising plans to end the decades-long Operation Banner.

The target date for that is August 2007, and, between now and then, there will be a further significant shrinking of troop numbers - from 9,500 down to 5,000.

Another two dozen bases will close. No more than 14 “core” sites will be needed to house the soldiers who stay in “peacetime” Northern Ireland.

And that means that over the next 18 months, the Army will close 26 “campaign” bases.

The fine details of that plan - the “sequencing” of those closures - is now very close to being finalised.

It will be published soon, but it is not yet clear if it will be ready in time for inclusion in that IMC assessment in February, although one imagines that the Army would want to see it there.

When it does emerge, what the plan will show us will be the final shape of the “peacetime” garrison - a picture of the planned army presence beyond Operation Banner.

So, there will be significant progress to report in those IMC assessments in both January and February.

The stories to tell will be of an IRA that is melting away and of sweeping security changes as part of a “war” that is ending.

Then the commissioners of the IMC will be back in April to write and speak again on the world of the paramilitaries.

It will then be nine months since the IRA statement of last July, and there will have been a further significant period of time to judge how that organisation is evolving.

As one source put it: “The more time you’ve got, the more you can point to the changes.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Deborah McAleese
13 January 2006

Eddie Copeland declined such a meeting

An Ulster woman came face to face with the British soldier who shot dead her brother in Belfast 35 years ago during a meeting brokered by peace activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The meeting will feature in a ground breaking documentary to be broadcast in the spring.

Mary McLarnon, whose brother Michael McLarnon was shot dead in Ardoyne on October 28, 1971, was filmed meeting the man who admitted pulling the trigger for the BBC programme Facing The Truth.

In an interview with the North Belfast News, Ms McLarnon said she took part in the programme to honour her brother’s memory.

She said: “I did what I did for my parents, for Michael and for justice. I have no regrets. I wanted to clear Michael’s name and character. He was an innocent man.”

The programme, which will be aired on BBC2 in March, features five other families and perpetrators of the Troubles.

It includes a meeting between Michael Stone and the widow and brother of Dermot Hackett who Stone was convicted of murdering.

Leading Ardoyne republican Eddie Copeland, whose father was shot dead by a British soldier on the same day as Michael McLarnon, declined to take part in the programme.

He told the North Belfast News it was not the right thing for his family.

He said: “We weren’t interested in speaking to the soldier or coming face to face with him, because you wouldn’t get anything out of some soldier saying, ‘I killed your father’, because it goes higher than him.

“It goes higher than his boss and goes all the way to the top.”

Belfast Telegraph

Blueprint for Army’s size in peacetime to be revealed

By Brian Rowan
13 January 2006

The final shape of the Army’s “peacetime” garrison in Northern Ireland will be known in just a few weeks time.

A military plan, setting out the sequence for the closure of around two dozen bases, is almsot finalised.

But it is not yet clear if it will be published before the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) next reports on demilitarisation at the end of February.

Before then the four-man IMC will give its latest assessment on the IRA.

That report will be ready at the end of January, and comes six months after the IRA statement of July last year which formally ended its armed campaign.

The Army’s response to that was to set a target date of August 2007 to end its long-running Operation Banner, how it describes its support role to the police.

Troop numbers will fall from 9,500 to 5,000 and the home-based battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment will be disbanded.

The Army GOC Sir Redmond Watt and his senior advisers at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn are talking to the Ministry of Defence.

It is now expected that within weeks the geographical shape of the “peacetime” garrison will be known.

“The military remain committed to supporting the PSNI for as long as is required,” an Army source said. “Normalisation has been and remains predicated on an enabling environment.”

Soldiers here are currently based at 40 sites but the Army is committed to having no more than 14 at the end of Operation Banner.

That means 26 “campaign” bases are to go.

In its February report, the IMC will measure demilitarisation progress against the latest assessment of the terrorist threat.

And, before then, the four commissioners will provide the British and Irish Governments with their latest findings on the IRA.

Based on intelligence assessments, that report is likely to say that the IRA structure is intact, but that the organisation has “fundamentally changed in its mode of operation”.

To quote one source, things are “heading in the right direction”.

On demilitarisation, unionists are concerned that such sweeping security changes are still being planned and have been particularly critical of the decision to stand down the Northern Ireland-based battalions of the RIR.

The Army hopes it will soon have details of the financial package that will be available to those soldiers and would hope to make this public around the same time that news emerges on the plans for base closures.

Daily Ireland

Party hits back over SDLP criticism

Eamonn Houston
13/01/2006

Sinn Féin last night hit back at criticism from the SDLP and direct-rule secretary of state over the party’s stance on the now aborted Northern Ireland (Offences Bill).
SDLP leader Mark Durkan and Secretary of State Peter Hain both attacked republicans for withdrawing support for controversial legislation which would have allowed security force killers to escape the courts.
Both claimed that Sinn Féin had been aware of the full implications of the legislation.
“How on earth they thought security forces could be excluded, I don’t know,” Mr Hain said yesterday.
Mr Durkan accused republicans of making a u-turn on a “dirty deal”.
He accused Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams of attempting to suppress the truth over Sinn Féin involvement in the legislation.
Mr Durkan said: “It is dishonest for Gerry Adams to claim that the OTR legislation was a major breach of Weston Park in 2001. The fact is that Sinn Féin negotiated a much more detailed side deal with the British Government at Hillsborough in 2003.
“It covered not just paramilitary killings, but state murders too. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness know this. Martin McGuinness even defended that publicly.
“In fact, it was only after it was made clear by the British government that OTRs would have to appear publicly in court that Sinn Féin called for the Bill to be dropped. That - and the public pressure from victims of collusion who had been sold out - caused the Sinn Féin leadership to back down.”
However, Foyle Sinn Féin MLA Raymond McCartney accused the SDLP leader of peddling lies on the issue.
Mr McCartney told Daily Ireland: “Since the British government placed their legislation dealing with OTRs before the British House of Commons Mark Durkan has deliberately engaged in a campaign of lies, half truths and innuendo aimed at attacking Sinn Féin and those we represent. Mark Durkan needs to catch himself on.
“He shamefully attempted to use the victims of British State violence to score cheap political points. Ignoring the fact that neither he nor his party ever stood up and challenged the British State on its murder of citizens throughout 30 years.
“Mark Durkan, for whatever reason, has never challenged the human rights abuses of the RUC yet felt qualified to use the victims of that organisation to try and advance his own political agenda.”
Mr McCartney said that the legislation proposed by the British government had been in “clear breach” of what had been agreed at negotiations at Weston Park.
“It was not the SDLP attempts at political point scoring which brought the British government to the point of withdrawing the Bill,” he said.
“It was pressure put on the British government by Sinn Féin, who made it clear to the British Secretary of State that republicans would not support these measures if the clauses relating to British State forces remained.”
“There are no British OTRs. The proposed legislation did not do what was agreed at Weston Park and therefore had to be withdrawn,” he said.
Mr Hain said yesterday that the on-the-runs legislation was an essential building block in negotiations which led to last July’s groundbreaking declaration from the IRA that it was ending its armed campaign.

Daily Ireland

Youth arrested en route to Belfast jailed

Pádraig Ó Meiscill
13/01/2006

Click to view - Balata drama group

A Palestinian teenager who was detained on his way to Belfast last July has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment by an Israeli military court.
Muhammad Sameeh (16) was travelling with the Balata drama group to perform at West Belfast’s Féile An Phobail when he was arrested by Israeli soldiers at the Jordanian border crossing.
Muhammad is being held at Telemond prison along with other Palestinian children in a jail which also houses Israeli criminals.
The drama group’s performance in Belfast was part of a world premiere tour of their play recounting the experiences of Palestinian refugees.
After spending two months and seven days under interrogation, Muhammad was charged with ‘assisting terrorism’ and was sentenced on December 28. Abu Hakeem, co-ordinator of the Balata group, recalled the day Muhammad was detained.
“At the border he was told to go to the Israeli intelligence services. After one hour the soldiers told him to take his stuff. After that he disappeared out of our eyes,” he said.
Eoin Murray of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign said he was not surprised at the decision of the Israeli court.
“The Israeli state has no particular interest in the rights of Palestinian children. Since the Intifada began one-third of the victims of Israeli state violence have been children. This particular incident would seem to be a reflection on their wider policies.”

Daily Ireland

Man’s killers are agents

A priest yesterday said it was believed the loyalist killers of a 21-year-old Catholic postman have escaped justice because they are police informants. Speaking to Daily Ireland on the fourth anniversary of the murder of Daniel McColgan, Fr Dan Whyte described as ‘appalling’ reports the gunmen are being protected by elements within the PSNI.

Ciarán Barnes
13/01/2006

A priest yesterday said it was believed the loyalist killers of a 21-year-old Catholic postman have escaped justice because they are police informants. Speaking to Daily Ireland on the fourth anniversary of the murder of Daniel McColgan, Fr Dan Whyte described as “appalling” reports the gunmen are being protected by elements within the PSNI.

Mr McColgan was shot dead on January 12, 2002, as he went to work in a mail sorting office in the loyalist Rathcoole estate on the edge of north Belfast. The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), said it carried out the killing.Within days of the murder, the names of two senior loyalists from southeast Antrim were being linked to the murder. One of them, now the UDA’s leader in the area, is reported to be a Special Branch informant.

Fr Whyte, whose St Mary’s on the Hill parish the McColgan family live in, said the feeling in the community is that the killers are being shielded.
“The names of the people who murdered Daniel are known among this community, that’s the feeling around here,” he said.
“The other common understanding is that the police know who was involved in the killing but they have not been touched because they are in positions as informants.
“These are the genuine concerns my parishioners have. It is absolutely appalling that the guys who did this are walking the same streets. They have committed murder, yet nothing has been done.”
Fr Whyte urged the PSNI to renew their efforts to bring Mr McColgan’s killers to justice.
He said that despite the murder occurring four years ago police chiefs should plough as much resources as possible into the investigation.
A spokesman for the PSNI said 12 people have been arrested in connection with the murder but there have been no charges.
He said detectives remain resolute in their determination to bring Mr McColgan’s killers before the courts.
Danny McColgan was one of four young men murdered by loyalists in southeast Antrim during a 12-month period between July 2001-02.
The others killed were Ciaran Cummings, Gavin Brett and Gerard Lawlor. The PSNI has yet to charge anyone in connection with these deaths.

BBC

Local people claim Rosemount base serves no useful purpose

Londonderry’s most senior police officer has given the strongest indication yet that the controversial Rosemount security base is to close.

Local people have mounted a long-term campaign to have the base removed because it “served no useful purpose”.

They also claimed the cameras were an invasion of their privacy.

Chief Superintendent Richard Russell, Foyle District Commander, said the building was “not up to suitable standards”.

Mr Russell said Rosemount base was of “very limited value” to him and he would be happy to see it close down.

“My view, when I look starkly at the economics of the situation, it costs me £250,000 a year,” he said.

“We are getting very few callers at the police station. The building is not really up to suitable standards, so from my point of view that present building is not acceptable.”

Irish Examiner

**If I were Francie, I would tell Sinn Féin to get stuffed.

13/01/2006 - 3:07:39 PM

A senior Sinn Féin member suspended after he spoke out against party policy is to be reinstated later this month, it emerged today.

Francie Molloy was suspended in November after he defied republican strategists and condemned plans to slash the number of councils in Northern Ireland from 26 to seven.

It is understood the Mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council appeared before a Sinn Féin disciplinary committee before Christmas.

Mr Molloy has since been told he will be reinstated to the party on January 22.

The Mid Ulster MLA said: “I welcome the opportunity to get re-involved in the political process.

“I have been involved for the last 40 years and it has been a difficult time to be isolated from my fellow republicans.”

The mayor declined to be drawn on whether he still held the views which led to his suspension.

He said: “I think we have to move on.

“We now have a Government announcement and my role now is to try and ensure that we have strong local government delivering services for the the public.”

The veteran was censured after he spoke out against the review of public administration announced by Secretary of State Peter Hain.

Mr Molloy called for the number of councils to be reduced to 15 whereas Sinn Féin had backed plans to cut the number to seven.

The party’s rivals condemned the decision to suspend Mr Molloy and accused Sinn Féin of running a dictatorship.

Sinn Féin today said it would not comment on the case until the disciplinary period was over.

Irish Examiner

13 January 2006
By Paul O’Brien and Dan McGinn

THE British Government and Sinn Féin spent yesterday attacking each other following the dramatic collapse of legislative proposals to deal with paramilitary fugitives, or “on-the-runs.”

Northern Secretary Peter Hain withdrew the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill from the Commons on Wednesday in the face of mounting opposition.

The bill was designed to ensure that those wanted for offences committed prior to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement would be free to return to the North if they wished.

The bill met fierce opposition in Belfast and Westminster from opposition parties, victims’ groups and human rights organisations.

Sinn Féin, which had sought such a bill for years, initially appeared to embrace the proposals.

However, it withdrew its support last month when it became clear that members of the British security forces would also have qualified.

Mr Hain later laid the blame for the debacle at the party’s door. “How on earth they thought security forces could be excluded, I don’t know.”

But Sinn Féin accused Mr Hain and his colleagues of wishing to hide the truth about British collusion in paramilitary crimes.

“Any objective examination of the British Government’s approach to date on this question will show its overriding concern has consistently been to hide the truth about its own role in the conflict,” said MLA Philip McGuigan.

Yet precisely the same accusations have been levelled at Sinn Féin. The SDLP has accused the party of wishing to cover up the full facts about IRA murders.

Meanwhile, the family of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane yesterday said suggestions it had influenced Sinn Féin’s stance were wide of the mark.

Mr Finucane was shot dead by members of the loyalist UDA/UFF at his home in 1989.

British security forces are believed to have colluded in the killing. Under the bill, those linked to the murder could have been granted amnesty.

But Mr Finucane’s son, Michael, also a solicitor, said yesterday: “There has certainly been no expression of support or opposition [to the bill]. My family have not taken a view on it.”

Irelandclick

BBC photo

The future of the Mater Hospital could be put in jeopardy after the North Belfast Partnership Board was forced to withdraw backing for a major development after DUP members withdrew support.
The multi-million development plan had cross-party support and work was due to commence in the next few months on a badly needed extension for the hospital.
However, because the extension would see part of the old Crumlin Road jail wall knocked down with some encroachment on the jail site, DUP councillors Nelson McCausland and Ian Crozier say they now want to wait until plans for the jail and Girdwood barracks sites have been finalised, a move that could delay building work by two years.
Nelson McCausland said that although his party supports the Mater Hospital development plan, his decision to withdraw support was a “personal thing”.
“They [the Mater] want to move ahead without waiting for overall agreement. They want to rush ahead, but a number of people have reservations in that while they support the general concept of expanding the Mater, they have reservations about rushing ahead without seeing the full implications.
“What they want to do is knock down part of the prison wall. It is only a personal thing but I know a number of other people share the view that we need to develop the jail as a tourist attraction.”
Joint chair of the North Belfast Partnership Board, Ian Crozier, said that he also wanted to wait until plans for the jail site had been finalised before the development plan was implemented, and that his position had support from within the Partnership.
“Basically what folk who were there [at a Board meeting] decided was that, yes, we support the principle of having the investment made in the hospital, but because the jail and Girdwood site are so big and of such potential significance, we couldn’t support the thing moving forward in advance of the actual process for developing the bigger site.
“I think the issue is that there are a lot of competing interests.
“Obviously there is the Mater, St Malachy’s and potentially a public records office – there is lots of stuff in the melting pot.”
He added: “The decision was taken in the context of the North Belfast Partnership Board and folk from the nationalist community certainly supported the decision to wait.”
But North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly says that it is imperative the Mater Hospital development plan is allowed to proceed immediately.
“In 2007 a review will take place that will see all hospital trusts amalgamated and if the work is not carried out in the near future it could have an impact on what services are offered in the Mater.
“There should not be any party politicking over such a vital service as a hospital, and there is no reason why the Mater development cannot be decoupled from the overall Girdwood consultation process because all the funding has been secured and the building plans finalised.
“The development should proceed right away and if there are internal problems in the DUP over their policy on the development, these should not be allowed to impact on the wider community. The Mater Hospital has been providing excellent service to the community over the last 35 years and is at the forefront of implementing new strategies that are driving waiting lists down and I do not want to see any delay in the development.”

Journalist:: Evan Short

Belfast Telegraph

Blair’s role not part of decision

By Chris Thornton and Michael McHugh
13 January 2006

The decision to drop charges in the Stormont spy case was sparked by information from Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde and not Ministers, the Government repeated yesterday as a new row broke out.

Solicitor General Mike O’Brien revealed that Prime Minister Tony Blair was consulted about the case, but almost a year before the trial collapsed.

Mr O’Brien said the Prime Minister’s involvement “formed no part” of the decision to drop charges in the case that ultimately exposed Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson as a being a British agent.

Mr Blair was questioned by the DUP earlier this week about his links to the case, and he repeated that “as far as I am aware, I certainly was not consulted on whether this prosecution should be dropped”.

DUP MP Nigel Dodds said he was not satisfied with the answers. “What precisely is the truth?” he asked.

“Given the Prime Minister’s track record of making misleading statements on issues relating to Northern Ireland it is easy to doubt the sincerity of Mr Blair’s answers.”

Charges against the three republicans accused of being involved in the spy ring, including Mr Donaldson, were dropped suddenly on December 8. The three men had denied the charges.

At the time, the chief prosecutor in the case, Gordon Kerr QC, said the charges were being dropped because of new information provided by the Chief Constable.

Mr Kerr said it was deemed “in the public interest” to offer no evidence in the case. Mr O’Brien repeated that the decision to drop charges “was informed by facts and information provided by the chief constable in November 2005 following a further development in the trial process.”

“No ministerial consultation took place,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said the only consultation on the decision to drop charges had been between Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, Sir Alasdair Fraser.

The consultation involving the PM was a routine request that had to do with another aspect of the case, Mr O’Brien indicated. He said the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Paul Murphy, had been asked for information, along with Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, responsible for MI5 and MI6.

Jane Winter from British Irish Rights Watch said: “I’d like to know when the Chief Constable knew Donaldson was an informer,” she said.

A PSNI representative said: “PSNI understands the reasons given by the Prosecution Service for withdrawal of charges against three individuals.”

“The entitlement of the three individuals to the presumption of innocence remains intact.”

—————-

Move to distance Ministers from collapse of legal action

By Chris Thornton

The Government seems no closer to telling the public how the public interest was served by dropping the charges in the Stormont spy case.

But the latest bit of information that has emerged about the case serves to reinforce Government claims that the decision to drop the case was not political.

By linking the collapse of the case to information from the police, Solicitor General Mike O’Brien is distancing it from Ministers.

The picture is still far from complete, but Mr O’Brien has set out some of the timings involved.

His intervention may close the gap between Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reference to there being no consultation with Ministers about the collapse of the case and a statement by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, saying that Cabinet members were consulted.

According to Mr O’Brien, Ministers were consulted about the case against Denis Donaldson, Ciaran Kearney and William Mackessy in January, 2005.

Mr O’Brien told DUP MP Nigel Dodds that “an issue” arose in the case at that time that prompted the Attorney General to carry out what is known as a Shawcross exercise.

The practice, named after former Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, involves the Attorney General writing to fellow Ministers asking them if they have any information about the case that “might bear on the consideration of the public interest”.

The information that came from Ministers at that stage “formed no part” of the eventual decision to drop charges, Mr O’Brien said.

He indicated that the key point in the case came from “facts and information provided by the Chief Constable” in November, a matter of days before the case was withdrawn on December 8.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Gordon Kerr QC, had said at the time that information from the Chief Constable had prompted the withdrawal of charges.

Afterwards, the Prime Minister told Parliament that “no Minister had anything whatever to do with the decision”.

He added: “Obviously, we were not consulted about this matter; it has to be a decision taken by the independent prosecuting authorities”.

Belfast Telegraph

Donna: I will never get a face transplant

By Claire McNeilly
13 January 2006

A survivor of the Omagh bombing has said there is “not a chance in hell” she would consider having a face transplant.

Donna Marie McGillion was speaking after Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who had the world’s first facial transplant, emerged from hospital in France.

Donna Marie survived the Co Tyrone atrocity which killed 29 people, as well as unborn twins, and injured 350 others in 1998.

However, she suffered third degree burns on more than 65% of her body and has so far endured a staggering 24 operations on her face alone.

She also had to wear a plastic mask for three-and-a-half years, and had a further 18 months of facial injections to prevent her scars from becoming “raised and lumpy”.

“It was hard when I woke after the bomb and realised the way I look, but at least it was still all me,” she said.

“After a face transplant I would be thinking I had someone else’s face and I would be wondering ‘how did they die?’ ”

Rejecting the surgical face transplant option outright, the local lady added: “It is great to see medical science has evolved, but it’s not for me. There are too many psychological aspects to be considered.”

Since the bomb, seven years ago, Donna Marie and husband Gary have a four-year-old daughter called Cara - and it seems the joys of motherhood keep her upbeat.

“I still go to the burns unit and still have corrective procedures,” she said.

“At the minute I am fine, but there are new things coming along all the time - like false skin - and obviously if it could improve my appearance I would have to seriously consider it, though I would be afraid of making things worse.”

Donna Marie also heaped praise on her family and friends for helping her to cope with her appearance and her life after the bombing

“Early on I would have loved just not to have to go out of the door at all, and even now, if I could deny the fact I was in the bomb I would. But it is there constantly in my face.

“You can’t stop people staring and you can’t change the way the world views you, but you can change the way you look at things. It is all down to your own perception.”