SAOIRSE32

GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times
14 July 2008

FIRST MINISTER Peter Robinson has described as “the most important investment in Northern Ireland for a generation” the decision by Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier to invest £500 million (€625 million) in its Northern Ireland operation for a new series of aircraft.

The investment, which Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said was won following joint lobbying by himself and Mr Robinson of British prime minister Gordon Brown, will sustain more than 800 jobs at Bombardier in east Belfast.

It is the biggest single investment by any company in Northern Ireland.

Bombardier in Belfast will manufacture the wings for the company’s new series of aircraft called the CSeries, described as “the greenest single-aisle aircraft in its class”.

The British government is providing funding of £52 million to the project in Belfast as part of a wider contribution of £155 million to Bombardier.

Bombardier announced the project yesterday at the Farnborough International Airshow in England. At the announcement were the DUP Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Industry Arlene Foster and Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward.

Bombardier said that German airline Lufthansa has signed a letter of interest for up to 60 CSeries aircraft at an approximate price of $46.7 million (€29.4 million) each. They are due to enter into service in 2013.

It added that “discussions with a number of established airlines worldwide are progressing well”.

The final assembly of the aircraft will be at Mirabel near Montreal in Canada. Its fuselage and cockpit will be manufactured at Bombardier Aerospace’s facility at Saint Laurent in Canada. Belfast will design and manufacture the wings.

Bombardier has major ambitions for the CSeries aircrafts which will carry between 110 and 130 passengers. It believes that there is a demand for 6,300 aircraft in the 100- to 149-seat commercial aircraft market over the next 20 years. This business, according to the company, is worth $250 billion and Bombardier “expects to be able to capture up to half of this market”.

“Today is a great day for Bombardier, our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our suppliers. I am proud to say that we have met our business plan objectives: a technologically advanced aircraft family, a strong pipeline of orders and repayable investments with governments and agreements with key suppliers,” said Pierre Beaudoin, president and chief executive of Bombardier.

Nico Buchholz, senior vice president of Lufthansa’s corporate fleet, said the airline was proud to be part of the launch.

Mr Robinson said the investment was an enormous boost for Northern Ireland in general and east Belfast in particular. He said many of the 800 jobs would be new jobs.

“It is impossible to underestimate the importance of such an investment . . . and given the nature of the lengthy negotiations and the present economic climate, I have absolutely no doubt that but for devolution this deal would have been lost,” he said.

“This investment not only delivers jobs to Northern Ireland, but crucially does so in a high-skill, high-value-added sector. It will give a boost to the whole of Northern Ireland.” Mr McGuinness said he and Mr Robinson lobbied Mr Brown to help secure the investment. As well as sustaining jobs at Bombardier Belfast, he hoped it would generate “further jobs in the supply chain”.

BBC
14 July 2008

A report on a 1971 loyalist pub bombing which killed 15 people in north Belfast is to be raised in the Commons later.

The devastation left at McGurk’s bar

The Historical Enquiries Team’s report on the McGurk’s bar bombing is being raised by Scottish MP Michael Connarty, whose great-uncle died in the attack.

It dismissed as “irresponsible and inaccurate” British army claims at the time the bomb was an IRA bomb being prepared which exploded prematurely.

A UVF getaway driver received 15 life sentences in 1978.

The group revisiting more than 2,000 unsolved murders during the Troubles found that the authorities’ IRA claim, which upset relatives of the victims, “could not be based on facts but instead reflected a desired outcome”.

Documents recently emerged stating that military advisers told politicians the bomb was in the hands of one of the customers and urged them to make this public.

Apology

Ahead of Monday’s brief Commons debate, Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward has written to apologise to the Labour MP for Falkirk East, an apology which he said reflected his concern for all those who died in the Troubles.

He said: “The tragedy of the Troubles is that any of those people died, and one of the things that politicians have to get much better at is actually taking on their responsibility as a secretary of state and saying, I’m sorry.

“Michael has a relative who was in that bar. I am sorry his relative died.

“I am sorry for the extraordinary additional pain they suffered from the descriptions at the time of who was behind the bomb.”

GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times
14 July 2008

THE ORANGE Order demonstrations over the Twelfth of July concluded without major incident with the most contentious of the parades at the Ardoyne shops in north Belfast ending peacefully on Saturday night.

Throughout Saturday in Northern Ireland tens of thousands of Orangemen, hundreds of bands, and many thousands more supporters participated in 18 Orange Order parades and one Independent Orange Order parade at Portglenone in Co Antrim.

Through co-operation with Northern Ireland Tourism and Tourism Ireland, Orange Order leaders laid particular emphasis this year on the “Orangefest” theme - promoting the celebratory, historic and cultural nature of the Twelfth.

This emphasis led to some success as there was a noticeable lessening of tension, although there were a number of minor incidents on the night of the 11th and on Saturday. It was also evident that more big stores remained open during the parading.

Equally, there were some paramilitary and sectarian references during the main parade in Belfast on Saturday that challenged the Orangefest emphasis. One band from Rathcoole in north Belfast displayed a number of “KAI” signs during the main parade, which is generally interpreted as meaning “kill all Irish”, with one bandsman having the word emblazoned on the back of his head.

Another band from the Shankill honoured Brian Robinson, the UVF member who was shot dead by an undercover British soldier in north Belfast in 1989 after he carried out the sectarian murder of a Catholic, Patrick McKenna.

But relative to the huge numbers participating and observing, the Twelfth concluded successfully. Orange leaders, police and politicians were happy it passed off so well. PSNI assistant chief constable Duncan McCausland said fewer officers were on parade duty this year, which freed up officers to focus on crime and normal policing.

In 2005 and 2006 there were scenes of fierce rioting at Ardoyne shops during the return journey of an Orange Order feeder parade. This year local Orange and nationalist representatives forged a deal to try to ensure there would be no trouble at the flashpoint.

Nationalists staged a protest as the feeder parade went by on Saturday night. Minutes earlier at 8pm, Orange supporters were driven past the shops on three buses. As they passed two windows were pushed out of two of the buses, the glass shattering on the road. A number of golf balls were also hurled.

On Saturday night the PSNI used CS spray when trouble erupted in Rasharkin, Co Antrim. Tensions had been high in the town after an earlier arson attack on the local Orange hall, which followed an attack on a Catholic-owned bar in Rasharkin.

On Friday night in Portadown, Co Armagh, 13 PSNI officers were injured, four of them requiring hospital treatment, during disturbances at Obin Street involving nationalists. Two men were arrested.

The same night there was also trouble in the New Lodge area of north Belfast when nationalists clashed with police. Two men were arrested. At Broadway in west Belfast police were called in to deal with trouble between loyalists and nationalists. Sinn Féin Assembly member Fra McCann said nationalist residents had “repelled a drunken unionist mob who attempted to attack homes in the area”.

“If the attack on nationalist homes is evidence of what Orange Order leaders tell us is a new approach to the Twelfth then they have a long way to go to convince people that they are abandoning the usual sectarian behaviour which nationalists have to endure year on year during the marching season,” he said.

While the Orange Order placed emphasis on the cultural and tourism elements of the Twelfth not all senior Orange figures were happy with this development.

The Order’s grand chaplain, Rev Stephen Dickinson, rounded on First Minister Peter Robinson for referring to the tourist potential of the occasion at the demonstration in Ballyclare, Co Antrim.

Mr Dickinson criticised the DUP for entering into government with Sinn Féin and said Orangemen would not go “down the same route” as the DUP.

“This is not about cultural tourism. This is about Protestantism. This is about Britishness. It’s not cultural tourism, Mr Robinson,” he declared.

The DUP in a statement said Mr Dickinson was motivated “by his party political bias as a friend of Jim Allister”, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice that opposes powersharing with Sinn Féin.

The defendant in the Omagh bombing civil case has never watched the trial from his prison cell

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Guardian
Sunday July 13, 2008

Real IRA founder Michael Mc-Kevitt’s video link in his prison cell, to enable him to see the Omagh civil trial against him and five others, has cost UK taxpayers £22,000 - yet he has refused to watch any of the proceedings.

Relatives of those killed in the Omagh bomb atrocity almost ten years ago and legal sources have told The Observer that the video link to McKevitt’s cell in the Republic’s top security Portlaoise jail has never been switched on while the case, which started in April, is being heard. McKevitt - who demanded the link - has only used it to confer with his legal team between sittings or after the case has concluded for the day, they said.

Michael Gallagher, the Omagh campaigner whose son Aidan was killed in the single biggest terrorist massacre of the Troubles, confirmed that McKevitt has ‘never gone live’.

Gallagher said: ‘Every day of the trial we have attended, the only time the screen is switched on while court is sitting is when two Irish prison officers test the microphone down in Portlaoise.

‘McKevitt has a kind of remote control device with a PIN number that enables him to tune into the court proceedings. Yet every one of us who has attended the trial has never seen him. When the evidence is heard in court the device is always switched to “off”, it is never “on”.

‘The device has never been live while the court was on, so presumably he doesn’t bother watching it unfold. If he was watching we would see him on the webcam.’

Legal sources close to the case and Irish security sources also confirmed that McKevitt had not watched the trial.

The Northern Ireland Court service confirmed this weekend that it had installed video conference facilities in the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast for the trial. A spokesperson said: ‘While the installation was primarily to facilitate the Omagh civil trial, it will also be utilised in other court hearings as necessary.’

The Court Service spokesperson said it was not responsible for any equipment used in Portlaoise, nor did it pay for such facilities.

The cost for the video conference equipment in the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast was £22,700, the spokesperson said.

She added that the equipment had been used by a defendant in the Omagh case to consult his legal advisers. That defendant, The Observer has learnt, was Michael McKevitt.

The Omagh families are suing McKevitt along with Seamus Daly, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus McKenna for what is believed to be £10m over their alleged involvement in the Omagh bomb plot. All five men deny any involvement in the bombing.

The case will reconvene in Dublin High Court this September and is expected to finish back at the High Court in Belfast a month later. Lord Brennan, who is representing the six families bringing the case, said it was probably the first case in the world where private citizens were confronting alleged terrorists.

Last week the Northern Ireland Policing Board admitted that, unless fresh evidence and new witnesses came forward, no one would ever be charged with the Omagh bombing.

The body that oversees policing in the north of Ireland concluded that there was virtually no chance of criminal charges being brought against anyone in the Real IRA connected to the atrocity. Twenty-nine men, women and children died in the blast on 15 August, 1998.

Some of the relatives of those killed privately admit that the civil action was their last chance to have their day in court.