Crisis Time

So surprise, surprise our politicians have had to call in the British and Irish governments to try and make headway with the politicians on policing and save the Assembly. Perhaps even the US will be making phonecalls to Hillsborough Castle in the next 24 - 48 hours.

Policing and Justice was always going to be tough especially with regard to contentious issues of parades and who the Justice Minister might be. Let me say at this point I have nothing against the Alliance Party and find their MLAs for the most part very easy to work with but by what right do they desrve to have a ministry?

NI Ministers are chosen by the d'Hondt system based on the strength of political parties. Alliance has in the past been proud of its vocal role as a sort of opposition in the Assembly - they will now lose this mantle if they take a ministry.

I have been asked several times today what I think will happen. So for what it is worth - I do not believe that the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach would be overnighting in Belfast if they felt nothing could be achieved. So the options are that they have a plan B which overcomes the parades issue - which can really only be that the governments control it which will please no one;could they ask an international panel to deal with it? they will read the riot act to the parties and somehow compell them to do a deal or finally pull the plug on the Assembly.

If the plug is pulled elections to the Assembly will take place in a few months. This will solve nothing! We will have the same politicians with varying degrees of party strengths disagreeing over the same old issues.

It will be a long night for the negotiating teams at Hillsborough bu for goodness sake sort it out all of our jobs depend on it and by the way what is filling the vaccum shots fired at police stations and at young people. Perhaps the politicians will be able to explain to Mr Heffron why they havent been able to do a deal and he has the advantage of understanding both Irish and English.