SAOIRSE32

Irish Examiner
20/10/2008

How the DUP handles plans for an Irish Language Act will indicate whether power-sharing in Northern Ireland will work or is doomed to failure, Gerry Adams said tonight.

The Sinn Féin leader said the issues of equality involved in the debate over legislative protection for Gaelic speakers were the same as those at the heart of the current impasse at Stormont.

The West Belfast MP said DUP opposition to an act was indicative of the party’s unwillingness to fully sign up to the principles of partnership and equality.

He was speaking after a meeting with DUP Culture Minister Gregory Campbell.

Mr Campbell’s predecessor and party colleague Edwin Poots ruled out an Irish Language Act citing its prohibitive costs.

He instead committed to furthering the interests of Irish speakers through a minority language strategy.

However Sinn Féin claim the full Act is required by the terms of the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, upon which devolution was set up in the North last year.

The failure to proceed with an Act is one the main issues – along with the devolution of policing powers, post primary education and plans for a multi sports stadium at the former Maze prison – that has led to the deadlock at Stormont, where the Sinn Féin/DUP-led executive has not met for four months.

“I think while it (the impasse) can be easily sorted out at the same time you (with the Irish language act) are actually at the root, at the nub of what will either trip these institutions up or make them work – and that’s equality and partnership, the lack of that or the presence of it,” said Mr Adams.

He said while he was not encouraged by what Mr Campbell said during the hour-long meeting at Parliament Buildings he sensed the DUP would eventually relent on the issue.

“I have to say by his demeanour and the things he said I’m not encouraged that the minister sees himself as the minister of all the people, I’m not encouraged that the minister is going to be a champion of the rights of people who are Irish speakers,” he said.

“But I think just watching his demeanour, and this is just an impression, that he knows in his heart it’s only a matter of time.”

Meanwhile, Mr Adams told the Assembly today that a major new strategy must be formed to combat alcohol-fuelled crime and anti-social behaviour.

The West Belfast MP called on the Office of First and Deputy First Minister to lead a major push to co-ordinate Government departments and policing policies to make life better for communities ravaged by crime.

“Community safety is one of the most important and pressing issues facing our society,” he said.

“Anti-social and criminal behaviour, young women assaulted, cars hijacked by thugs, our elderly being terrorised in their homes, citizens being badly beaten and stabbed, murder.

“Every citizen has a right to a safe environment. This Assembly has an obligation to create this environment.

“We are failing to do this.

“I believe we have the ability and the potential to legislate better and more effectively on these matters than any British direct rule Minister. We also have the right to do so.”

He highlighted the need to find new ways to prioritise community policing and cited commitments made in the Criminal Justice Review which he said had yet to be delivered.

Mr Adams raised concerns over drinking in public and the issue of how repeat offenders are handled in the courts.

“Many local communities are distraught by the inability of the criminal justice system and statutory bodies to contend with prolific offenders,” he said.

“Many communities also feel that there are inconsistencies in the application of police bail and court bail.

“Bringing in legislation is crucial to tackling these matters, although some important steps can be taken now.”

Mr Adams highlighted the success of schemes which brought local communities together with statutory bodies, criminal justice agencies and the police.

“For decades some local communities have been developing strategies and promoting policies to eradicate poverty, poor health, low educational achievement and lack of community resources. Social justice and the rights of citizenship demands this,” said Mr Adams.

“It also makes good sense in the battle against crime.”

He added: “It is an opportune time for the development of an inter-departmental, multi-disciplinary strategy, aimed at reducing harm and promoting safety in local communities.

“Given the cross-departmental focus it requires, even if we had a Justice Department this can best be done through the Office of the First and deputy First Minister.”

Henry McDonald
Guardian
Monday October 20, 2008

Secret files on informers operating in the IRA and other paramilitary groups during the Troubles would be unavailable to a future Sinn Féin justice minister in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland security minister has confirmed.

Paul Goggins also confirmed that the justice minister would not see all classified intelligence on present counter-terrorist strategy. Goggins said that when policing and justice powers are transferred from Westminster to Belfast, issues of UK national security will remain with ministers in London.

His remarks appear to assuage grassroots unionist fears over the prospect of a future Sinn Féin justice minister being able to pore over secret files relating to the conflict or anti-terrorist security policies.

Hardline unionists opposed to the power-sharing deal between the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin claim that a minister from the party that was linked to the IRA could soon have access to high-grade intelligence material on the past and the present, including the identities of state agents.

During the Troubles dozens of nationalists, most of them members of the IRA and other republican insurgent groups, were killed for being alleged informers.

Pressed on accessibility to information on agents, past and present, Goggins said: “They [future ministers] would not have direct access to that. There will be no access to past files either.” He also stressed that any new devolved justice department would not have full control of the Northern Ireland judiciary. Judges, he said, would still be appointed independent of executive government.

Goggins warned loyalist paramilitary groups that time was running out over the decommissioning of arms. Unlike the IRA, neither the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defence Association has put any weapons beyond use. The minister signalled that an amnesty that allows loyalists to hold weapons meant for decommissioning may be removed, with the prospect of the security forces launching search and arrest operations for arms.

“They [the loyalists] have got about five months,” he said. “It [the amnesty order] is subject to annual renewal and the order ends in 2010. If I was going to ask for that law after February 2009, for the third time, I know I will be asked at Westminster … ‘Why are we doing this?’ People at Westminster would be asking why I am going back to them again asking for these abnormal powers. So the clock is running down.”

He challenged the loyalists to speed up the process towards disarming.

Goggins said he agreed with the International Monitoring Commission’s last report that the IRA had ceased to exist as a paramilitary force.

The IRA’s army council was “no longer functioning”, he said. On the last report by the body overseeing the status of the paramilitary ceasefires, Goggins said: “There is a degree of finality about it.”

By Stephanie Bell
Sunday Life
Sunday, 12 October 2008

Young people are doing it for themselves in a bid to help combat Northern Ireland’s suicide epidemic. A group called Data, with members as young as 14, are reaching out to their peers — not just in Northern Ireland, but across the world.

The group, based at the Niamh Louise Foundation Protect Life resource centre in Dungannon, has found a powerful tool in helping save young lives through the internet.

Niamh Louise McKee

In a bid to offer an effective alternative to controversial sites promoting suicide to youths, Data members have set up their own mentoring site through popular social networking vehicle Bebo.

And since the launch of www.bebo.com/data-and-the-donkey the teenagers have talked countless despairing kids from all over the world into getting medical help.

Set up in memory of their young friend Niamh Louise McKee from the Co Tyrone town, who tragically took her own life in 2005 at the age of 15, Data’s most effective weapon in the battle is its members.

“Because we are young ourselves we can relate to what young people who are in despair are going through and they can relate to us and talk to us,” said Data chairwoman Alana McKeever.

A founder member of the group, 18-year-old Alana explained how it got started.

“When Niamh died it was so out of the blue — she was the life and soul of everything and it was just so shocking and so hard to understand.

“At school everyone was crying, including the teachers, but it was two or three weeks later before it really started to kick in and you started to ask ‘why?’

“We found that no one could explain why, or help us understand why it had happened.

“Niamh’s mum Catherine had set up the foundation in her memory to help people come together and talk about their experiences of suicide, and so myself and Niamh’s boyfriend and another friend went along to it. We then decided in February 2006, on what would have been Niamh’s 16th birthday, to set up a youth group to provide information and help to young people.”

Initially Data was set up to reach out to kids in the local area, but the young people had tapped into something unique and it wasn’t long before they were contacted by others like themselves from throughout Tyrone, Armagh, Antrim and Down.

The group have been involved in numerous activities including major fundraisers, a ‘Candle of Light’ vigil in remembrance of suicide victims in their home town and training in suicide prevention.

But it was the setting up of their website a year ago that has had the biggest direct impact on helping young people on the verge of suicide.

Alana explained: “Because Niamh’s mum discovered — after she died — that she had been visiting websites promoting suicide, we felt that we needed to combat this on the internet and so decided to set up the Bebo site.

“Some of us completed the ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills) first aid course and about six or seven of us monitor the site.

“It’s been going about a year now and we’ve had 3,000 views on the page and there are currently 350 members.

“We are there to listen and can relate to what the young people visiting the site are saying, and so they find it easier to open up to us.

“In our age group we know where these young people are coming from and we understand the pressures they face.

“We have been talking to people from as far away as New Zealand and we know that many of them have gone onto get help after speaking to us.

“In the Dungannon area there have been so many recent suicides and it is very worrying, not just for parents but for young people.

“It leaves us worried about what is going through our friends’ minds.”

The young people have just completed a fundraising bed push from Dungannon to Coalisland, raising £1,800 for their campaign.

Their latest project is an awareness poster with information about Data and the Bebo

site, which they hope can be posted at youth centres and businessed across Northern Ireland in a bid to reach young people who need help.

Data will also be playing a part in two candlelight vigils in Cookstown and Armagh in December.

Added Alana: “It’s rewarding for all of us in Data to be able to help, but it’s not all work and no play.

“We have a lot of fun together —Data has a great social side to it and we’ve made some good friends.

“We hope that people will offer to take one of our posters so that we can help get the message out about the website and the group to as many young people in Northern Ireland as possible.

“We want them to know that there is help available and that they are not alone and that there are people who understand what they are going through.”

• If you would like to support the young people by displaying one the of their posters, you can contact them through the Niamh Louise Foundation on (028) 8772 6717.

Sunday Life
Sunday, 19 October 2008

A young mum has made a heartfelt plea to Stormont Health Minister Michael McGimpsey: “Save my beautiful boy’s life.”

Carter Buchanan (2) has battled for survival virtually since birth with a rare form of epilepsy that can cause up to 16 seizures in a day. Sunday Life has closely followed Carter’s journey of hope and revealed last week that he had undergone his first test in Chicago’s world-famous Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Carter with Emma

The top physician who saw the tot was in no doubt he would benefit from pioneering treatment.

The expert assessment was a major boost to Carter’s battling mum Emma — but she now faces a heartbreaking dilemma.

For unless she can raise a staggering £165,000 within the next month to cover the battery of tests and intensive therapies Carter needs, she will have to fly him home.

Twenty-five-year-old Emma, who lives in Holywood, Co Down, with her partner and two other young children, is praying Mr McGimpsey will become the family’s Good Samaritan.

In a ‘Dear Minister’ letter, Emma reminded him of a promise he made that there would be funding available for treatment for all children who need it, provided they have exhausted the options available on the NHS.

And she carefully outlined Carter’s medical history, telling the minister: “During the past two years Carter has been on at least 23 anti-convulsion drugs and two steroid treatments trying to stabilise him.

“Unfortunately he has responded to none and due to uncontrollable seizures is unable to walk or talk. All the options have been explored, but no one seems able to cure his condition.

“I asked for a second opinion at Great Ormond Street in London in January 2007 and we had four days of telemetry monitoring carried out on Carter. But to date we have no record of anything they found during his stay. I have explored all avenues in relation to finding answers for my son’s condition and was forced to take matters into my own hands.

“Knowing my son’s life was at risk, I searched high and low and found the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago which has treated other children suffering critical and prolonged fits. Since arriving in Chicago Carter has undergone a 24-hour EEG and Dr Nordili (head of the hospital) was able to reveal he was suffering more seizures that even we were aware of.”

Emma also pointed out that the family has raised £15,000 for Carter’s initial treatment, but face mounting bills as it continues.

“We desperately need your help,” she wrote. “I am asking if you, as minister of health and as a parent yourself, can give my son the chance of life he deserves.

“Unless we get help we’ll be forced to return home before Carter’s treatment has really begun — everything we’ve done will have been in vain.”

And Emma also urged the minister or his officials to open dialogue with the Chicago clinic, which has already treated five children from Northern Ireland.

“It could be mutually beneficial and the exchange of knowledge and expertise could lead to a breakthrough that one day might ensure other children like Carter don’t have to travel 4,000 miles to get the treatment they need,” she added.

As she awaits a reply from the minister, Emma’s friends and family in Holywood are still frantically trying to boost Carter’s fighting fund.

• Donations can be made to Carter’s Journey of Hope, Northern Bank, Holywood, account number 10041866, sort code 95-03-32

Belfast Telegraph
Monday, 20 October 2008

Newly disclosed classified documents show Taoiseach Charles Haughey and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were offered the chance to forge a very unusual cosmic alliance.

But, instead of coming from an EU partner or an Asian power, the request came from “a secret envoy of the Cosmos Supreme Civilization Circle”.

Hitherto secret papers released by the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) show the two premiers were contacted with some urgency about a prospective attack by a UFO.

Bizarre it may well sound, but both Kildare Street and Number 10 saw fit to acknowledge the incident with the UK government ordering the MoD to assess whether there was any action would be needed in the event.

The letter, which originated in Seoul, South Korea from an un-named author, urges support and help in the face of the threat of imminent attack on the earth.

“I am all anxiety a nobody know about riskiness of UFO attack to air defence of the earth and electric wave of the for kill and injury”, was the somewhat unlettered demand for attention.

“I want to discuss about space development of the your country. I want to meet to you. I demand to mighty support and help.”

Earthlings should subsequently be put under the control of the Cosmos Supreme Civilization Circle and the protection, presumably, of the “Robot’s Army”.

After the urgent letter hit Downing Street, it was forwarded to the MoD for “official action” according to a memo. “No 10 have passed it to us for action as we see fit and you are asked to consider whether there is anything which can usefully be said to the correspondent and to action accordingly,” said the rubber-stamped note.

The Department of the Taoiseach, in a reply to the author thanked him for his recent letter and said it would be brought to the attention of the Taoiseach “as soon as possible”.

Betty Meyler of UFO Ireland said she is not surprised by the letter and insists that discussions have taken place between different countries and aliens in the past.

“I’ve never heard of a letter being sent to governments before,” she said.

“But we do know that there have been meetings with the intergalactic governments and the governments of Russia, the United States and Britain. This doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Henry McDonald
Guardian
19 Oct 2008

Brian Lenihan’s criticism of Irish consumers shopping in “another state” betrays a commonly held view

Booms on the Irish border used to mean bombs, rockets and landmines exploding. Now they equate to something entirely different.

Towns and cities on the northern side of the Irish frontier are enjoying rapid retail growth despite the credit crunch. Places once synonymous with terrorism, destruction and division such as Newry and Derry are benefiting from a mass influx of shoppers from the Irish Republic. The southern bargain hunters are driving up to 50 miles to stock up on food, drink and other goods that are substantially cheaper in Northern Ireland’s sterling zone as opposed to the euro one of the republic.

The flow of cash into knock-down price shopping malls like the Quays or Buttercrane centre in Newry prompted Ireland’s finance minister, Brian Lenihan, this week to partially blame Ireland’s economic woes on the vast numbers of southern consumers shopping in Ulster.

Striking a rather sour note, Lenihan warned that there had been a huge loss of revenue to the Irish exchequer because southern citizens were buying their weekly shopping across the border. That is why, Lenihan said, the Irish government had to impose higher taxes to maintain essential public services. This was the consequence of the republic’s people buying in another state, he added.

That reference to “another state” is quite telling, especially in the context of the current political stalemate in Stormont. The power-sharing executive has still not met since June, even though Northern Ireland faces the same problems as everyone else in the republic and Britain: rising fuel bills partly due to energy companies enjoying near monopoly status, a declining property market and the spectre of 1980s-style unemployment looming over the horizon. The northern airwaves are filled with disgruntled members of the public berating their political leaders for failing to act in unison during these turbulent times.

The sticking point between the two largest parties - Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists - remains the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Ireland assembly.

The DUP insists it will agree to the transfer of these powers from London to Belfast once there is “community confidence”. Sinn Féin meanwhile claims the DUP is reneging on commitments agreed to in the 2006 St Andrews agreement about the assembly taking control of the police and the judiciary.

On the surface the row appears somewhat superficial. Because the DUP has in principle agreed to the transfer while agreeing with Sinn Féin that one possible compromise is that the centrist Alliance party join the cabinet and take charge of a joint police-justice ministry.

Behind this however lies a possible deeper reason for Sinn Féin’s refusal to allow a full cabinet meeting to take place.

There is increasing evidence of internal problems within mainstream republicanism, with grassroots members complaining that much of what the Adams-McGuinness leadership promised has not been delivered. There is a growing, if somewhat belated realisation among some of the republican rank and file that the Sinn Féin project of Irish unity by 2016 (the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising) is a complete illusion.

If the Stormont coalition – a devolved administration still inside the UK – is no longer envisaged as a “stepping stone” towards fusion with the republic, then perhaps it would be better to be outside rather inside the devolved institutions, to be a party of protest and retain your old radical edge.

This devolution-doomsday scenario is probably a far away prospect even for disillusioned Provos. There is no other game in town. Instead the Sinn Féin leadership is seeking to re-engage the British and Irish governments in the political process, which will entail urging Brian Cowen and Gordon Brown to apply joint pressure on the DUP to bend to Sinn Féin’s will.

The trouble with this strategy is that it belongs to another world that has long passed. The Cowen government in Dublin might issue statements urging the DUP to move on policing, now echoing Brown’s plea for them to do the same during his last visit to Belfast. But the idea that two prime ministers currently engaged in an existential struggle to save their banking systems and stop their economies sliding into recession and mass unemployment are going to focus their energies to resolve the petty squabbles at Stormont is hopelessly naive.

Lenihan’s exasperation over his fellow citizens opting to shop in “another state” betrays the commonly held view of southern society that has welcomed the final fruits of the peace process but has little enthusiasm for paying the huge economic, social and political costs of absorbing the north. They don’t say it too loud down in Dublin - they are often drowned out by the romantic republican ballads struck up in pubs just before closing time - but the Ireland’s silent majority believes the north should already be at rest; neither they nor their political leaders in the Dáil are going to expend most of their energy on the sectarian circus at Stormont.

The parties up there are on their own.

• Henry McDonald’s new book on Irish republicanism, ‘Gunsmoke and Mirrors,’ will be published by Gill and Macmillan next month