SAOIRSE32

BBC

Five reports being prepared by Stormont politicians on key policy issues may not be made public.

Committee reports may not be seen by the public

A Stormont source said the reports had been prepared to inform a future power-sharing executive, not the general public.

But a Fair Rates campaigner said the documents should be published.

In November, Stormont’s Programme for Government Committee set up six sub-groups to draw up reports on policing and justice, school admissions, water charges and rates, rural planning, the economy, and the decentralisation of Civil Service jobs.

The recommendations on public sector jobs are likely to be published when the question is debated by the assembly on Tuesday next week.

However, the committee has decided that the other reports should not be published unless a strong case is made that they should be made public.

A Stormont source said the reports had been prepared to inform an incoming executive, not the general public.

However, Fair Rates Campaigner Anne Monaghan, who gave evidence to one of the sub-groups, said the report dealing with rates should be made public and debated on the floor of the assembly.

Irish Times

18/01/2007 18:32

Republican Sinn Féin has rejected an offer by Gerry Adams to have discussions on adopting a joint strategy on policing in Northern Ireland.

Party president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh said Mr Adams knows well the values of Republican Sinn Féin and knows that no reconciliation is possible.

“Republican Sinn Fein’s values were once his own, before he and the Provos decided to accept the institutions of British rule in Ireland,” Mr Ó Brádaigh said in a statement this evening.

Mr Adams had offered to meet dissident republican leaders in a bid to win their backing for his party’s plans to endorse the PSNI.

With Sinn Féin facing internal tensions and potential splits over its decision to hold a special ardfheis to consider backing the PSNI, Mr Adams claimed he had no problem with former comrades running against his representatives in elections to the Stormont Assembly.

Mr Adams also urged the “Real IRA”, Continuity IRA and Irish National Liberation Army to end all armed violence, insisting a united Ireland can be achieved peacefully.

But tonight Mr Ó Brádaigh questioned the point of Mr Adams’s offer. “Is it the people who have resigned recently from his party?,” he asked.

“For our part we are not dissidents. The discussions he proposes do not refer to us,” he said.

In a message to other republicans - some of whom have issued death threats against him and Sinn Féin colleagues Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, Mr Adams said: “I want to meet with these organisations . . . and impress upon them my belief that the current Sinn Féin strategy is the best way forward for our community and for the wider republican struggle.

“I am willing to work with the families of prisoners belonging to or supportive of these groups, and I have already raised with both governments a number of issues, including the conditions in Maghaberry Prison and the transfer of prisoners held in England back to Ireland.”

Mr Adams told the dissident republicans still committed to violence that they had no strategy for delivering Irish unity and independence.

“They have no popular support. Their actions are counter-productive,” he said. “Their actions put the lives of innocent people - and their own members - in grave danger.

“The only product of their campaign is incidents like the tragedy of Omagh, where republican and unionist lives were taken, and the destroyed lives of an increasing number of young people facing long prison sentences, Mr Adams said.

He also welcomed the decision of republicans who oppose Sinn Féin to stand in the Assembly polls planned for March. Mr Adams said: “Elections are the proper arena for testing different political views and analysis, and I look forward to defending and promoting and winning popular re-endorsement of the Sinn Féin peace strategy.

“Armed struggle was never a republican principle. It was an option of last resort in the absence of any other alternative,” Mr Adams claimed.

“But, there is now an alternative. There is a peaceful way to achieve political change, equality, justice and ultimately Irish freedom.”