Moving Backwards? 

One unionist twitter account at the weekend posed the question; “How many different ways can the DUP tell us we MUST vote DUP no matter how incompetent or corrupt they have been?”

The comment followed Jeffrey Donaldson’s claim that this election is the most important in a generation for unionists. He warned: “Sinn Féin will push for border poll unless DUP wins in May election.”

Of course, Jeffrey knows that whatever the outcome of the election – win, lose or draw –Sinn Féin’s efforts to secure a unity referendum will continue. It’s what we believe in. The Good Friday Agreement provides for it. As an Irish republican party our objective is to end the union with Britain and to create a new agreed Ireland. The shape and form of that new Ireland will be a matter for the people to decide, democratically, peacefully, respectfully. Jeffrey knows this too.

Investing in Irish speakers

Two weeks ago almost two hundred gaeilgeorí from across the North gathered in Belfast City Hall to celebrate 12 years of Ciste Infhéistíochta na Gaeilge. This is the Irish language investment fund that was established following a particularly fraught negotiation at Hillsborough Castle in early 2010 that centred in the main on the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Executive and Assembly. It was another of those occasions when the British government’s failure to honour previous commitments and the DUP’s opposition to those commitments brought the Good Friday Agreement institutions to the point of permanent collapse.

Moore St Exhibition for Belfast

For the last two weeks the alternative plan for the development of Moore Street prepared by the Moore Street Preservation Trust has been on exhibition in Cork. Regular readers will know that I have a particular grá for the 1916 Moore Street Battlefield site and the efforts to save this hugely important historic area from developers who plan to destroy much of it.