Damian O'Loan (Paris): The situation in Stormont may now merit the term crisis. A prominent Sinn Fein representative in the South of Ireland, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, has threatened collapse of the Assembly if policing and justice are not devolved: “we will have no option but to pull out our ministers.” Jeffrey Donaldson MP, MLA, Privy Council member and possible Justice Minister, has called for clarification of the threat: “Do they want to stay in the executive? If they do, let's meet and address these issues." Both sides claim the other refuses to talk; it is widely held that Sinn Fein are blocking the passage of other Ministerial business until their key electoral promises have been resolved – or as Peter Robinson has it: “Adams seems to think that it is the role of everyone to move to his position.” The other parties are unforgiving, nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan saying “The soundings coming from Sinn Féin at the minute are more ludicrous than ominous.” Moderate unionism's leader Sir Reg Empey warned “This sort of behaviour cannot continue for much longer.” Read the rest of this post...

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): The Prime Minister has sent a response to the 15,700 people who petitioned him to reprimand DUP MP Iris Robinson following her claim that members of the LGBT community should seek a cure. Predictably, Gordon Brown has chosen only to point to the strong anti-discrimination legislation in place in Northern Ireland, and links to the Equality Commission. Read the rest of this post...

Robin Wilson (Belfast, Policy Analyst): The suggestion that the various secretaries of state for the nations and regions should be wrapped up into one department has made sense ever since devolution was established in the initial years of ‘New’ Labour. But devolution to Scotland, Wales and (always shakily) Northern Ireland was, paradoxically, characterised by the patrician English trope of amateurish muddling through. And so the repeated case made by the Constitution Unit for a formal system of intergovernmental relations, as in Canada or Australia—and of which the unified department would have been one element, along with Lords reform to make the second chamber a voice for the nations and regions—fell on deaf Whitehall ears. Other departments in effect became ‘English’ departments, even when their actions had implications for devolved counterparts. A decision to move belatedly towards having a single minister for the devolved jurisdictions at the cabinet table—a further step from the rather awkward job-sharing of recent years—would certainly be welcome, if media speculation is borne out. But a fly in the ointment remains Northern Ireland—and if such a move were premised on a belief that imminent devolution of policing and justice powers would slot in the last piece of the jigsaw of a settlement for the troubled region, this could turn out to be a mistaken assumption. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It seems that OurKingdom has picked up a couple of mentions on the nominations thread for the political blogging award at Northern Ireland's premier blog, Slugger O'Toole. Many thanks to Chekov and O'Neill for these fulsome recommendations: Our Kingdom: “Fair Deal is one of the very few bloggers delivering a DUP standpoint in a thoughtful manner.  I rarely agree with what he says, but he’s always worth reading. Damian O’Loan is an excellent new addition, writing coherent and temperate analysis from a liberal nationalist perspective.  An encouraging indication that moderation is not dead.” And “Fair Deal, Damian O’Loan, Tom Griffin, Patrick Corrigan and (very occasionally) Ian Parsley all are delivering thoughtful and coherent articles analysing different areas of political life here.”  Nominations close in mid-September. It's well worth checking out some of the excellent blogs that are in the running so far.

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): After months of deadlock, it looks as if there is finally movement on the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Stormont Assembly. Sinn Féin had falsely claimed that a May 'O8 deadline for the transfer was secured in the St Andrews Agreement. The DUP opposed any deadline, which was was fundamental to Sinn Féin's vote to support the police. That support in turn was crucial for the creation of the current Stormont executive – hence the present crisis. Now the two main parties have decided there will be a single Policing and Justice Department and Minister, and that they will not field candidates. Read the rest of this post...

In a comment on Damian O'Loan's lament about ongoing sectarianism in Northern Ireland, Anthony Barnett asked why restorative justice of all things is deepening the divide when it is supposed to do the opposite. Damian's answer vividly illuminates what is going on.  Damian O'Loan (Paris): Restorative justice involves community representatives mediating in low-level disputes, reducing criminalisation while better serving victims' interests. It has been effective internationally, most particularly regarding youth justice. What's specific to Northern Ireland, where it was this week further institutionalised, is it lies in the hands of groups rising from the embers of paramilitarism. Read the rest of this post...

Fair Deal (Slugger O'Toole): The Barnett formula has fundamental flaws and failed in its aim of equalisation. The IPPR report Fair Shares attempts to offer a new way forward for the UK, but the alternative has its own flaws, key questions are sidestepped and it will probably be Alex Salmond who determines whether Barnett reaches 40 years of age. Read the rest of this post...

Damian O'Loan (Paris): One wonders, observing the political crises in London and Belfast, how much is real and how much is 'silly season' filler. In the case of Northern Ireland, some may be surprised that “the hand of history” may not be leading to reconciliation after all. The relationship with Brown's difficulty is that both crises represent the inevitable unravelling of spin to expose reality underneath. Blair said he solved Northern Ireland - as elsewhere, he spoke too soon.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The DUP this week sought to undermine Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey by portraying his precedessor David Trimble as the real architect of the party's deal with the Conservatives. Even if that claim is exagerrated, Trimble's former advisor Steven King is a well-placed observer of Conservative-unionist relations. In the Irish Examiner, he suggests that the Tories' move away from English nationalism could actually assist a rapprochement with the SNP. George Osborne, the Tories’ finance spokesman and unofficial deputy leader, in particular, has been asking how it would look if the Conservatives were held responsible for the break-up of the UK, not least if the 1980s were to repeat themselves and the Tories were seen to provoke Scottish nationalist sentiment. Wouldn’t a partnership involving the whole UK (including the north), not just the whole of Great Britain, answer criticisms that the Tories are “the English party”? Furthermore, if the Conservatives were in government at Stormont with the nationalist party par excellence, Sinn Féin, wouldn’t that clear the way for new approaches in Edinburgh and silence doubts about the Tories’ commitment to devolution? 

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Passport checks between Britain and Northern Ireland are set to be introduced as part of the e-borders scheme, the Irish Times reported on Monday. The changes will be fiercely unpopular with unionists, who have argued that it means they will be treated as second-class citizens within the United Kingdom. Passport and other identity checks will be introduced between the Republic and Great Britain - but not between the Republic and Northern Ireland - from 2009 for air travellers, and the following year for those travelling by sea under London's e-borders security system.  Read the rest of this post...

Ian Parsley (North Down, Alliance): Senator Barack Obama made the inevitable reference to Northern Ireland during his speech in Berlin last week, saying that walls had “come down in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics found a way to live together”. These are delightful sentiments – but they do not tell the story. There are, in fact, more walls up separating communities in Belfast than at the time of the Agreement 10 years ago. In truth, it could better be argued, Protestants and Catholics have found away to live apart - and they have done so, primarily, for economic reasons. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Conservatives' link-up with the Ulster Unionists is provoking a great deal of interest around the blogosphere today. Over at Brassneck, Mick Fealty sees the move as a sign that the Tories have finally developed a coherent response to devolution. From a unionist (in the broadest sense of that word) perspective the new arrangements may finally give both parties a purpose beyond the narrow protection of a political union that is no longer under coherent attack from outside, but in grave danger of losing coherence from within. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): On a day when the Conservatives are expected to be also-rans in Scotland, David Cameron has delivered the clearest possible signal of his commitment to the union. In a joint Telegraph article with Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey, he calls for a renewal of the historic alliance between the two parties. As leaders we met at Westminster last week and agreed to set up a joint working group to explore the possibilities of closer cooperation leading to the creation of a new political and electoral force in Northern Ireland. That working group will report to us in the autumn Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): A cross-party group of MPs yesterday tabled an amendment to the Embryology Bill that would extend Britain's post-1967 abortion law to Northern Ireland. This could be an interesting can of worms for the Prime Minister as the Sunday Telegraph noted at the weekend: The issue is doubly politically sensitive for Mr Brown because it threatens to reopen the row about how Labour secured the support of nine Democratic Unionist party MPs – crucial to the Government's success in winning last month's Commons vote on extending the period terrorist suspects can be held without charge to 42 days. The Prime Minister has denied any "deal" was done with the DUP. However, Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, reassured the DUP at the time that the Government had no plans to extend abortion laws to the province.   Read the rest of this post...

Damian O'Loan (Paris): What kind of company was Labour keeping when it relied on DUP votes to get 42 day detention through the Commons? The answer is becoming clearer by the day. Iris Robinson MP, MLA, wife of Northern Ireland First Minister Peter, has made three horrendous statements on public morality. The latest to be reported: “There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children.” Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Divisions in the Northern Ireland Executive resurfaced at the weekend, when the Irish News reported that a meeting due to take place on Thursday is in doubt: If the one scheduled for July 24 does not take place an entire quarter of the year will have passed between the last meeting on June 19 and next possible date. It will also mean that First Minister Peter Robinson has only presided over one executive meeting since taking office. There are an estimated 40 pieces of government business trapped in limbo as papers and proposals await executive approval.  Read the rest of this post...

Damian O'Loan (Paris): Allegations of British collusion with torture by Pakistani security services led to calls for an Intelligence and Security Committee investigation on Tuesday. A week earlier the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee published a report into historical enquiries. These events are linked. Lat year, the British government accepted the findings of a report confirming police collusion with a loyalist paramilitary group involved in murders and other grave offences.The NIAC report may be a step towards allowing further historical inquiries to be suppressed. Why would we not want to learn from our history? Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Barnett formula for financing the UK's devolved governments is unfair and should be replaced, according to a report issued by IPPR North on Thursday. Scotland and Wales have already begun considering alternatives. Northern Ireland should be looking to do the same, according to one of the report's authors, Iain Maclean in the Sunday Times today:  Read the rest of this post...

Diane Forsyth (Dublin: Justice for the Forgotten): On Thursday all parties in the Irish Parliament passed a formal motion urging the British Government “to allow access by an independent, international judicial figure to all original documents” which it currently holds, relating to a number of “atrocities” that occurred in the Republic in the 1970s.  While not as significant as, say, last year’s Baha Mousa ruling allowing the application of the Human Rights Act to deaths perpetrated by the British Army overseas, the motion is a very important step in the fight against security force impunity and for military accountability. The atrocities referred to include the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of the 17th May 1974, which killed 34 people, the Dublin bombings of 1972 and 1973 (the latter of which killed a British citizen) and a number of other fatal attacks perpetrated in the Republic in the early to mid-1970s, a period during which the conflict in Northern Ireland was escalating inexorably. All of the attacks were (privately) inquired into by an independent judicial figure appointed by the Irish Government, Judge Henry Barron, whose final report was published in 2006.   Barron was tasked with inquiring into the attacks for a number of reasons, not least the fact that not a single person had ever been prosecuted in relation to any of the murders. His investigation came in the aftermath of a Yorkshire Television documentary, broadcast in 1993, which brought to light new evidence pointing to the involvement of British security forces in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. (In spite of this, it should be noted that the actual impetus behind the Irish Government’s decision to initiate the new inquiry, which only began in 2000, arose from the campaigning work of Justice for the Forgotten, the organisation representing the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.)  Judge Barron’s Reports were subsequently examined by an Irish parliamentary Sub-Committee, which then produced a number of its own reports on his findings. The Sub-Committee’s ultimate conclusions in relation to the Barron investigations were stark. They noted that, “we are dealing with acts of international terrorism that were colluded in by the British security forces.” This collusion encompassed active co-operation between loyalist paramilitaries, the UDR (a British Army regiment based in the North of Ireland), the RUC (the contemporary Northern Irish police force) and British Military Intelligence.   Despite his strong findings however, Judge Barron was not in a position to conclusively prove this collusion. Why? As the Sub-Committee also noted “all of the Barron reports [were] frustrated by the absence of any real co-operation from the British security forces."   Concerns with regard to protecting information of relevance to “national security” may partly underlie this complete lack of co-operation. Fortunately, this can be, and should be, easily circumvented by the appointment of an independent, international judicial figure, acceptable to both the Irish and British governments, who can assess all of the relevant documentation and advise as to further actions.   For citizens of the United Kingdom, who understandably might be shocked by Barron’s findings and hopeful that such criminal activity on the part of British security forces is dealt with appropriately, the appointment of such a judicial figure is of utmost importance, for the sake of the integrity of their own forces and to prevent the perpetration of further unlawful deaths in sovereign nations abroad.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Tonight is known as Eleventh Night in Northern Ireland, the evening before the Orange Order's traditional celebration of King William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne. The occasion moved Patrick Corrigan to some reflections on a visit to his childhood hometown at Amnesty's Belfast and Beyond blog: I left Ballycraigy estate in 1978 when I was nine years-old. I have never much wanted to go back. Reflecting this evening on my brief visit today made me think of how far Northern Ireland has come in the intervening years. We have travelled through vales of tears, but, eventually we have achieved relative peace and shared political structures. But, more than anything, Ballycraigy today made me think of how far we still have to travel. Politicians can sign peace agreements, but, as WB Yeats noted, real "peace comes dropping slow".