The first anniversary of power-sharing at Stormont passed yesterday without
fanfare or ceremony.
Even this afternoon's scheduled session of the Executive was called off.
Instead, the message at the main session of the United States Economic
Investment Conference was 'business as usual', with most of the Executive
ministers due to take part in the proceedings at some point.
"The focus is on the conference so it was decided to postpone the
Executive meeting," a spokesman said.
But as the political parties reflected on the past year, the DUP said
republicans had faced "hard lessons" — with more to come as they
"realise parity and equality are a two-way street".
Gregory Campbell said: "As we look forward we need to demonstrate to
the entire community but particularly unionists that the days of
partisanship and concessions to republicanism are well and truly over.
"This will mean hard choices for republicans, but after 30 years they
have to realise that the future is going to be different from the past in
more ways than just the abandonment of their long-held beliefs and their
long sought-after goal of trying to bring the two countries on this island
together."
In a review of the past 12 months, he cited the rejection of the Irish
language legislation, "thwarting" of Sinn Fein's campaign to
achieve the devolution of policing and justice by this month and defence of
academic selection as evidence of improvements over Direct Rule
administration.
On policing and justice, he insisted: "As a result of our negotiations
this matter cannot be devolved without our agreeing to it. We want it done
when the time is right, it's not right now."
Alliance Party leader David Ford said he was pleased to see the first
birthday of devolution but less than pleased with the performance of
Executive ministers. "They have been unimaginative and have often
lacked the vision and courage to take the decisions needed to improve
Northern Ireland. They are meant to be making life better for local people
but there is very little evidence that they have done this," he said.
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