A chara, – Your editorial ("Sinn Féin's tactics on welfare") of March 11th was inaccurate, misleading and obviously setting out its stall of opposing Sinn Féin in the next general election.
But the paper of register should at least get its facts right before it asserts that Sinn Féin has “plunged the political process” in the north into crisis.
The political process is in difficulty because the DUP was intent on reneging on a key element of the Stormont House Agreement which would, now and in the future, protect families with children with disabilities, adults with severe disabilities, and the long-term sick.
Sinn Féin sought to engage with the DUP over the last two weeks. Specifically, we required sight of the schedules to implement the welfare policy but the DUP withheld these. One scheme we did see, probably unintentionally, did not protect future claimants.
The DUP planned to have the Bill passed with an enabling clause to implement schemes we hadn’t seen knowing that when they did become public the Bill would already be law. That is not the way for a partner in government to behave.
The editorial accuses Sinn Féin of refusing to “apply limited welfare cuts”. This glibly dismisses the significant hardship the British government’s cuts would inflict on the most vulnerable. It also ignores the one and a half billion pounds that the British Tory government had already stripped from the block grant.
You accuse us and the SDLP of damaging the peace process and threatening a collapse of the Executive and the northern Assembly. The key objective in agreeing the Stormont House Agreement was to engender stability and certainty. It is the DUP that has damaged this.
You then conclude with a question, “what party in its right mind would enter government [in this state] with Sinn Féin”.
I know this narrows the choice but how about one which keeps its commitments? – Is mise,
GERRY ADAMS, TD
Leinster House, Dublin 2.
Sir, – The apparent retreat by Sinn Féin on agreed welfare reform in the North (and consequent breach of the much-negotiated Stormont House Agreement) proves once again that Sinn Féin is unfit for government. Even within the governing system that operates in the Assembly, where Sinn Féin never risks being put out of government, the party is incapable of taking the difficult decisions that a responsible government must take. How would it function in government in the Republic, where losing power is always a possibility for a political party after such power has been attained? The enacting of welfare reform in the North was an important test for Sinn Féin which it has sadly failed. Its cowardly U-turn on the implementation of welfare reform (reform which is designed to ensure that living off social welfare is never more profitable than working would be) also arguably makes a united Ireland more difficult to bring about, as comparatively lavish public spending rates in the North (spending which is currently possible due largely to the block grant for Northern Ireland which is funded by the taxpayers of mainland Britain) arguably cannot be reconciled with the necessarily more constrained public spending realities per capita in the Republic of Ireland. – Yours, etc,
JOHN B REID,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.