Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Flags report issues left fluttering in the wind
THE Stormont flags commission report has been a predictable waste of time, money and effort.
Five years, £800,000 and 168 pages later, Stormont is still no closer to agreeing a way forward on the intractable disputes surrounding flags, bonfires, murals and memorials.
Did anyone seriously expect a different outcome?
As its unwieldy name suggests, the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition faced a dauntingly broad task when it was first established by the Executive in 2016.
Resolving these annual problems has long evaded our politicians.
In the end the commission, made up of both political appointees from Stormont’s five main parties and non-political members, was also unable to find consensus on many of the key issues.
No agreement on changing legislation around the flying of flags from lampposts.
No agreement about flags on public buildings.
No agreement on ideas discussed around commemorations, such as a collective “day of reflection” for everyone who suffered during the Troubles.
As the understated subheadings in the report describe it, these are areas “where challenges remain”.
Of the around 45 recommendations that were put forward by the commission, many are vague and overly simplistic.
“The commission agreed that flags supporting paramilitary organisations should not be flown,” they wrote with a straight face
With such ground-breaking proposals like these, the flags commission could be renamed the Commission on Stating the Obvious.
There was some consensus on recommendations for bonfires, mainly around tidying up legislation to give safe and inoffensive displays a legal footing.
However, the difficult issue of enforcement received the broadbrush treatment and was not really tackled definitively.
The report was unceremoniously published with all the fanfare
Resolving these annual problems has long evaded our politicians
you would expect group” involving the DUP and Sinn from a midweek, late Fein’s Junior Ministers and Stormont a f t e r n o o n p r e s s officials was formed in a bid release. to agree an action plan on implementing
By that stage we the report. already knew none of This group only met for the first the recommendations time in March. However, no action had any prospect of being enacted plan was agreed. anytime soon, if at all. The longer the delay and the
The report had been completed closer it got towards next May’s 16 months earlier, but was held Assembly election, the more inevitable back from publication by the first it became that any salvageable and deputy first ministers’ office recommendations in the for“furtherdiscussion”.a“working report would be unpicked. Sinn
Fein has blamed the DUP, whereas the DUP has pointed to Sinn Fein blocking efforts at Stormont and Belfast City Hall to mark Northern Ireland’s centenary as having soured relations.
Sinn Fein in Belfast unilaterally attempting to regulate bonfires while the commission’s findings were still under consideration will not have helped matters. There was no mention of the party’s proposed “public liability insurance” for bonfires in the commission’s report, for example.
The flags report was described by Alliance leader Naomi Long as a “very expensive can-kicking exercise”. After five years and no outcome, many will likely draw the same conclusion.
It is probable that bonfire disputes in particular will be increasingly a matter for the courts to resolve. A judgment in September on a contentious interface bonfire in North Belfast offered guidance on a way forward.
In the meantime, disputes surrounding flags, bonfires, murals and memorials look set to continue. See you all back here next summer.