Civil servant failed 2004 security vetting due to intelligence report on brother

BBC Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent, Vincent Kearney, reports on the case of Kevin Kennedy, who is suing the PSNI after he was forced to resign from a job with the Northern Ireland Policing Board in 2004 after failing a security vetting. Last month, Mr Kennedy failed in a legal attempt to gain access to the intelligence information on which the police based their assessment. During a hearing at the High Court in Belfast, it was revealed that the Board was told during …

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Arthurs’ Challenge to Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 Ruling Begins

The Irish News reports that “prominent Co Tyrone republican” Brian Arthurs’ legal challenge to the ruling that he should stand trial in a non-jury court, on charges of converting criminal property and obtaining a money transfer by deception, began today.  The original case against Arthurs collapsed in August 2008 when the judge ruled that the Public Prosecution Service had failed to provide any evidence to the court. The non-jury trial ruling was made under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007, introduced by …

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Quality of education at Gaelscoil na Daroige “inadequate”

The Irish News education correspondent, Simon Doyle, notes that a Northern Ireland Education and Training Inspectorate report has stated that the “quality of provision in Irish and English was inadequate” at a Londonderry Irish-medium primary school which the NI Education Minister, Sinn Féin’s Caitriona Ruane, has twice awarded funding to against the advice of her departmental officials.  From the Irish News Ms Ruane approved the first proposal in 2007, but the school never met the necessary intake numbers and was forced to re-apply. The second proposal …

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No boys and girls you are not still MPs…

Earlier on today I was looking up old fight mates Kerry McCarthy and Nadine Twitter streams for the first time in a while, when I discovered both had changed their accounts from their names followed by MP, to 4MP. Kerry’s old account exists but in abeyance. Ivor has spotted three of our ex MPs still tweeting as though they were still MPs: Conor Murphy, Nigel Dodds and Michelle Gildernew. And beleive it or not that is actually against the law …

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Poots drops the first DUP ball of the morning…

At 7.52 this morning, Ed Poots, unprompted by the interviewer, suggested that Robinson’s difficulty was not comparable with covering up child abuse… Of course, on one level he is dead right… But the comparison was foolish coming as part of a defence… It suggests the party was not prepared for the emotional impact of the programme… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and …

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Iris – the statement…

IRIS Robinson’s statement in full… AFTER Christmas I announced that I did not intend to seek re-election for any public office. I did this to allow the party and my colleagues to make preparations and move forward. However, I also indicated that I would want later to explain what lay behind my decision.“I have had physical health problems for most of my life but very few were aware that over recent years those medical problems were both physical and mental. …

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Carmel Hanna to retire from Assembly

News came through yesterday afternoon that the SDLP’s South Belfast MLA Carmel Hanna is to retire from the Assembly. Originally from Warrenpoint, Carmel was elected a councillor for the Balmoral Ward on Belfast City Council in 1997 (a position she recently resigned from) and became an MLA the following year. She was later appointed Employment and Learning Minister at Stormont before suspension. Outgoing SDLP Leader Mark Durkan paid tribute to Carmel, saying: “Carmel Hanna has served her constituents of South …

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Lisbon Essay (31): Checks, balances and a stronger social dimension

And in the last of our Lisbon essays, Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore rather trenchantly asserts that Lisbon is not about transfering power from Dublin to Brussels. It is he believes, in contrast to Jimmy Kelly in LE26, enhances a social Europe by setting the Charter up as a watchdog on all EU institutions when it comes to the framing and passing of law. And in contrast with Joe Higgins’ concerns in LE4 he believes it would provide a bulwark …

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Lisbon Essay (30): The least impact upon the Irish Constitution of any Treaty ever voted on…

Ciarán Toland is a barrister (so we’ve given him a bit more space to make his case). In this, essay he lays out why he thinks the Lisbon Treaty has taken on a significance in Irish law that barely reflects insignificance in real terms. It lies primarily in the proposal to give the EU (previously three pillar multiple personality) and single legal personality of its own. Much else, he concludes is moving the furniture around: “…the Lisbon Treaty has the …

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Lisbon Essay (29): It is Ireland’s credibility that’s at stake…

John O’Farrell picks up on Heaney’s focus on the word ‘credit’ (nó creid as Gaeilge), and reckons that the poet has put his finger on what’s at stake for Ireland in the referendum when he argued that a No vote will mean that it will be “up to our EU neighbours – not us – to decide how we will be treated in the future.” It’s a theme taken up previously in LE17 and LE13. O’Farrell argues that even though …

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Lisbon Essay (28): How on earth do we switch this (EU) thing off?

Declan Ganley of Libertas notes that if you vote yes tomorrow, then there may be no more opportunities for the plain people of Ireland to turn this process around. This, he argues, is not the second time this treaty has been voted on but the fifth. That the only changes that have been made to it in all of that time (he makes the score 3-2 to the No side by the way) are purely cosmetic demonstrates just how far …

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Lisbon Essay (27): If it’s No, Europe will simply find a way to move on without us…

Dan O’Brien, senior Europe editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, posts from Berlin where he is covering the aftermath of the Germany election. He takes a sounding of insider opinion on Ireland and Lisbon, in several of Europe’s major capitals. The general assumption is that Irish voters will, as they did with Nice, change their minds in tomorrow’s poll. Most negative opinion is constellated around Paris and Berlin. In brief, that negativity centres around a disbelief that a …

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Lisbon Essay (26): A ‘No’ vote would show solidarity with the Charter and a social Europe

Jimmy Kelly of the Unite Union is one of the most respected figures of the No platform. His position is relatively straightforward. In Ireland workers protections lag hugely behind that of much of Europe. In particular he argues that the Charter for Fundamental Rights is being sold as a fait accomplai, when in fact there is no obligation for national governments to comply with its imperatives: “In effect, the Government is asking us to support the ‘form’ of fundamental rights …

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Lisbon Essay (25): As Iceland discovered the EU is the firebrigade…

Jason O’Mahoney lays out a scenario he believes the No side is studiously avoiding: what happens to Ireland’s national interest within Europe if there is a No vote and Lisbon is abandoned for a more centralised, bi or tri-lateral decision making processes in its stead. The Treaty itself is dry and technical because it is dry and technical, not because anyone is trying pull a fast one. And he believes that counter to Nigel Farage’s assertions in LE10 the “alternative …

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Aiste Liospóin (24): Níl, mar tá neamhspleachas mar oidhreacht duinne…

Vótáil Concubhar i gcoinne an Chonartha an uair dheireanach, agus ní bheith sé ag athrú a vóta an uair seo.. Tá dhá cheist difriúil ann dar leis: fearg leis an Rialtas, agus na rudaí a mbaineann go díreach leis an Chonradh féin. Níl an cheist faoi rogha idir an fhoireann seo nó an ceann eile; ach is rogha polaitiúil (agus, níos tábhachtaí, bunreachtúil) é. Faoi dheireadh, tarraingíonn an dara reifreann seo ar Chonradh Liospn, tar ?is breith chomh cinnte an …

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Lisbon Essay (23): Why Ireland can’t afford the Lisbon Treaty…

Niamh Uí Bhriain of Cóir sites her anti Lisbon argument in the material crisis of the Tiger economy. Nevertheless she notes that “the Lisbon Treaty is not about providing jobs or encouraging enterprise – it’s a treaty designed to centralise political power in the European Union”. She denies there are any short term economic consequences to signing up to the EU, but that in the longer term it leaves Ireland strategically weaker inside the EU… The attraction for foreign firms …

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Lisbon Essay (22): Vote Yes to this unloved bastard son of the European Convention…

Another European view and another from the Yes perspective comes from Daniel Cohn-Bendit, renegade from 1968 and currently co-president of the European Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament… No one loves it, he says. Who could? It long, legalistic, and complicated. An ad man’s nightmare. But it is the shaken down product of 8 years of filtering and dispute between all the countries of Europe. It’s not as democratic as he would like, nor as democratic as that …

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Lisbon Essay (21): Europeans cannot opt out of globalisation and its problems…

Richard Gowan notes that with the changing of the guard at the US Whitehouse President Obama is not likely to constrain himself to old alliances to deal with the problems of a much larger and more complex (not to mention more dangerous) world than most of us knew growing up… Richard notes that already huge amounts of time are being chewed up in 27 sets of bilaterals on different sets of policy initiatives … And he argues that since the …

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Lisbon Essay (20): After eight years of intense political negotiation it is time to move on…

Margot Wallström the current Vice-President of the European Commission lays out her case for Lisbon. In particular she notes the high level of distrust lingering in some circles with regard to the changes agreed (ie Ireland’s right to a commissioner, and the legal guarantees), but argues that these are political decisions the unbinding of which would have severe political consequences for whomsoever tried to do it. She also argues that whilst the dangers of a race to the bottom are …

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TPA get stung again over inaccurate figures….

Lest Matt or any of the guys over at the Taxpayer’s Alliance think I have some kind of agenda, let me re-assure them I don’t. The topline of their previous ‘research’ that the Government was paying lobbyists to lobby government is, if true, important work. Particularly in Northern Ireland where the public sector employment steals much of the oxygen from the private sector. That’s why it’s important that if you are going to have a punt at bursting that particular …

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