Alliance environment minister Andrew Muir has criticised Going For Growth, the 2014 Stormont strategy that aimed to almost double the size of Northern Ireland’s agri-food industry.
As Muir noted, the Sinn Féin-led and DUP-supported strategy failed to address the extra pollution it would generate, contributing directly to a host of environmental disasters, including the crisis in Lough Neagh.
Lessons must be learned and a new approach taken – Muir wants an independent environmental protection agency. But it would be a pity to throw out the baby with the toxic bathwater.
An awkward truth about Going for Growth is that on its own terms it was an unprecedented success, coming close to delivering its ambitious targets. It might have exceeded them without the disruptions of Brexit and a collapse of devolution.
Light-touch regulation was not an incidental flaw: it was fundamental to the plan, despite obvious risks that were highlighted from the outset by the SDLP among others. However, this was the fashionable approach at the time.
Sinn Féin ministers now want a general industrial strategy for Northern Ireland. Going For Growth is a model as well as a cautionary tale.
It would be a pity to throw out the baby with the toxic bathwater
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The most disturbing warning yet about Lough Neagh has been issued by Dr Les Gornall, a renowned environmental scientist and pioneer of anaerobic digestion technology.
Speaking to the News Letter, he said the Lough Neagh fly has disappeared and could be replaced by “Scottish biting midges or mosquitoes – spreading diseases like malaria in Northern Ireland”.
Midges would be bad enough: they make much of the Highlands uninhabitable for half the year. Nor would they have to come from Scotland. There are already multiple species of biting midges in Ireland, able to swarm into any ecological niche.
Dr Gornall believes the lough can slowly recover if there is an immediate 50% cut in phosphorous pollution from slurry-spreading on farms. Nothing like that has made it into Stormont’s new Lough Neagh recovery plan.
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Asked about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential election, DUP leader Gavin Robinson said he could not think of “anything helpful” the president has “said or done for the unionist community”.
Perhaps Biden did nothing directly but unionists can be thankful for his appointment of Joe Kennedy III as special economic envoy.
Biden is an unapologetic Irish nationalist who came to power amid rising Irish nationalist sentiment across Congress over Brexit.
Kennedy has helped reset perceptions of US policy in Northern Ireland back to their Good Friday Agreement default – scrupulously even-handed, despite obvious nationalist sympathies. If only he was as skilled at securing investment.
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Sinn Féin is facing a culture war conundrum over puberty blockers.
The UK-wide ban on the drugs for children with gender dysphoria, introduced temporarily by the Conservatives and about to be made permanent by Labour, does not apply to private healthcare in Northern Ireland. Activists in Britain say they will use this “loophole” to fill prescriptions.
Stormont’s Department of Health claims it cannot close the loophole without approval from the whole executive, as the matter is “significant and cross-cutting”. This is a dubious cop-out, as science-based medicine should be no other minister’s business. Nevertheless, executive approval will be required.
Alliance and Sinn Féin support puberty blockers, with the UUP and DUP against.
Alliance is most vocal but this scarcely matters as the executive’s veto mechanism operates like the petition of concern: As Alliance is not large enough to invoke it, its votes do not count.
So it all comes down to Sinn Féin, which has fallen noticeably silent on the issue since last year, when its MLA Emma Sheerin said puberty blockers for teenagers were “normal healthcare”.
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Vandalisation of a bilingual street in a mixed street in south Belfast has sparked fresh arguments between DUP and Alliance councillors over the council’s signage policy. Introduced two years ago, it requires support from 15% of respondents in a survey of residents.
Nerves would be soothed if the council admitted it has changed its policy already. Earlier this year, installation of bilingual signs in two mixed streets in north Belfast was indefinitely deferred, despite almost half of residents being in favour, due to concerns about community relations. It appears such streets now have a de facto majority requirement. Survey responses indicated residents would have accepted a decision on this basis.
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Portadown Orangemen have applied for a Drumcree parade during the All-Ireland football final, claiming in effect that every Catholic in Co Armagh will be too busy watching the game to notice a march going past.
Brethren have apparently not considered the precedent this would set, in the vanishingly unlikely event it was permitted. Could republicans say “I see there’s a Rangers match on, so we’re holding a hunger strike commemoration in your garden”?
There is also a flaw in the underlying assumption that a major sporting fixture distracts people rather than firing them up. There must be very few police officers left in local lodges for such an argument to have seen the light of day.
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The Together UK Foundation, a unionist advocacy group that has Arlene Foster among its trustees, has complained the GAA is a “chilly” place for unionists. As an example it cites the Gaels Le Chéile campaign, an online petition calling on the taoiseach to plan for a united Ireland.
The foundation should chill out. Gaels Le Chéile is only notable for its lack of success: in the three years since it was launched the petition has gathered 16,000 signatures, equivalent to just 3 per cent of the GAA’s membership.
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The Executive Office has given the Reformed Presbyterian Church permission to hold Sunday services in Ebrington Square throughout July. SDLP Foyle MLA Sinead McLaughlin has written to the first and deputy first ministers complaining that any religious service is a misuse of “an inclusive and shared space”.
DUP MLA Gary Middleton has responded that it is an issue of “religious freedom”.
This unfortunate argument over a peace amenity will never be resolved if it is presented as a clash of rights. The solution lies in a detail of McLaughlin’s letter, where she complains about use of an “amplification system”. As with the preachers in central Belfast, this is what turns a personal liberty into a public nuisance.
Ban or license amplifiers and nobody needs to get bogged down in what is being said or who is saying it.