DURING the week, the leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald once again raised the suitability of Leo Varadkar remaining in ministerial office because he had sent a copy of an agreement between the state and the Irish Medical Organisation to Dr Maitiú Ó Tuathail, the then president of a rival GP organisation, the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP). Despite pointing out that the information was already in the public domain, he admitted that what he did was “inappropriate” and apologised. A Sinn Féin motion of no confidence in him was rejected after a Dáil debate.
Following a decision by An Garda Síochána to upgrade the investigation into his actions and even though leading legal experts were of the opinion that it was unlikely that the tánaiste would face criminal charges, the Sinn Féin leader called on him to resign or for the taoiseach to sack him if he didn’t. If any of these suggestions had have been implemented, it would have precipitated a major political crisis causing a possible general election in the middle of the ongoing pandemic and accompanying economic crisis.
However, what shows double standards is the stance that Sinn Féin adopts when it select candidates to be appointed to ministerial office in Northern Ireland. At least three of them have not only been charged with paramilitary offences but convicted of them before being appointed as ministers in the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive.
Gerry Kelly was convicted in November 1973 of causing explosions in London that year and given two life sentences plus 20 years. He was appointed as junior minister to the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister from 2007 to 2011. Following him, in the same ministerial role from 2011-2012, was Martina Anderson, who was convicted in 1986 of conspiring to cause explosions and who was also given a life sentence.
Carál Ní Chuilín was convicted in 1990 of firearm possession, possession of explosives with the intent to endanger life, and attempted murder. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, but she was released after four years. She served as minister for culture, arts and leisure from 2011 to 2016 and in 2020 under Ms McDonald’s leadership of the all-Ireland party she was appointed as minister for communities.
I would invite the Sinn Féin leader to justify if these were suitable credentials for appointment to ministerial office. I would further invite her to clarify if they were to win the next election in the Republic of Ireland would Sinn Féin appoint anyone with a paramilitary record to the post of minister of justice (or to the same position in the Northern Ireland Assembly after the 2022 assembly elections.
John Cushnahan
Former Leader of Alliance Party and Former Fine Gael MEP
Pro-life politicians should walk out if abortion law is imposed
THE latest scandalous announcement by the UK government to force Northern Ireland to speed up abortion services is a gross travesty of justice. Blasé politicians at Westminster seem to have no qualms in foisting heinous laws on the Northern Ireland Assembly, that will result in the cruel deaths of thousands of unborn babies. That is what abortion does, it kills babies.
It is clearly evident that the raging pandemic, that has claimed many lives and brought the nation to a virtual standstill, has not brought lawmakers to their senses.
Mr Brandon Lewis, the secretary of state, chillingly says: “I welcome a renewed focus on the NI Executive securing the abortion services that women and girls are legally and morally entitled to... it is a human right to be able to access quality healthcare.”
We remind Mr Lewis that abortion is not a human right nor healthcare. A human right to abortion does not and cannot exist, because the right to life of every person is widely recognised in international law as being the most fundamental and unalienable right upon which all other rights are built –- chief among them being life itself. The right to life for every precious unborn baby, must always be respected and upheld.
Neither is abortion ‘healthcare’. The term ‘healthcare’ implies that someone is being healed or that doctors will do what they can to save a person’s life. Nobody has the right to kill an innocent unborn human being and call it ‘healthcare’.
It is a damning indictment on Westminster to think they can, at a whim, railroad a law that is the exclusive responsibility of the devolved Assembly, one which they already voted against at Stormont and also rejected when it was imposed on them two years ago.
While the DUP has said it will ‘vigorously oppose’ any new abortion law forced upon it, the time has also come to make a firmer stand.
If Martin McGuinness can walk out of Stormont over a couple of lifeless boilers then our pro-life politicians should be able to walk out when the lives of thousands of unborn babies are at stake.
Donald J Morrison
Inverness
Scotland
Divided history could form solution for centenary monument at Stormont
MAY I, through your letters page, offer a solution to the problem posed by Sinn Féin’s refusal to allow the erection at Stormont of a stone monument, in the shape of a map of Northern Ireland.
Could we not have the stone Northern Ireland monument situated on the right-hand side of the majestic driveway and, with a nod to parity of esteem, an equally sized monument of the rest of the island placed on the left-hand side? On the face of this monument, chiselled into the stone, could be the truthful, unbiased account of how Ireland and its people came to be divided.
It would be an excellent opportunity to explain to foreign visitors, in the centenary year, how the colonisation, plantation and banishment of Irishmen to ‘hell or Connaught’ by a foreign nation presaged the formation of what the other monument across the road represents. Quite possibly, Sinn Féin would not object to that solution.
Jimmy Crossey
Newry
Apply Westminster pay rise model to NHS staff too
SO the staff running our NHS are worth a paltry one per cent pay rise, instead of one more in keeping with the professionalism they have shown over the period of this pandemic – working extremely long, hard, shifts, a shining example to all that cannot be said of our present government; still, we must consider ourselves fortunate that Boris and Arlene are not running our hospitals.
The staff of the NHS are asking for a 15 per cent increase, when it should realistically be 25 per cent. However, once a fair increase has been agreed, all future pay rises must use the same system operated within Westminster with its own in-house yearly wage increase controlled by an independent body, thus NHS staff would never again negotiate future pay increases. All this could be paid for by making generous cuts to the wasteful Trident nuclear upgrade programme, leaving plenty of money for the urgent needs of the UK population, one being to reduce the 20-year long waiting lists. Was I mislead in believing that this country was strapped for cash?
Edward Murphy
Ballycastle
Co Antrim
