Policing bill for Twaddell protest camp keeps on rising

By Deborah McAleese

October 09 2014 12:01 AM

Between the time I write this and when you open your newspaper, another £40,000 will have been spent policing a loyalist protest camp in north Belfast.

Given the carnage that spending cuts are set to wreak in front-line policing, only the most unreasonable of minds could argue that it would not be desirable to seek a solution to the Ardoyne parading dispute.

That is exactly what the Secretary of State Theresa Villiers was trying to do when she floated the idea of a panel to examine the impasse – find a solution. Her idea may not have been perfect but with cross-community buy-in from political parties perhaps it might yet represent a start.

Bearing in mind the violence which has scarred the Ardoyne parade in recent years, Mrs Villiers said: "Doing nothing is not an option."

Except she was wrong. Because the reaction to her plan suggests that doing nothing is exactly the most likely outcome – until next year when it is too late again.

Unionists, who had called for an inquiry, sniffily said they would reserve judgment on the plan. More scathing were Sinn Fein and the SDLP who railed against the proposals and said it would undermine the Parades Commission.

Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein said that a panel appointed by the Secretary of State would have no credibility. We must leave it, he argued, in the hands of the Parades Commission – failing to remember that this is also a body appointed by the Secretary of State.

The problem with the logic of the two nationalist parties is that it was the Parades Commission itself which first mooted the idea of an outside body to examine Ardoyne. They welcomed the Villiers' initiative this week. Clearly they don't feel like they are being undermined at all.

So what is the alternative to the panel announced this week? Those who denounced it have provided no solution other than to throw it back to the Parades Commission, and this takes us no further away from the violence which has hung over Ardoyne for years.

When you wake up tomorrow another £40,000 will have been spent on policing this crisis.