SDLP Minister Margaret Ritchie's stance on UDA decommissioning has spiralled into a battle with the DUP which threatens the Stormont Executive, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor
The princely sum of £400,000 per year for three years to help loyalist communities move away from conflict may seem like loose change. But the decision by SDLP Minister Margaret Ritchie to end her department's £1.2 million backing for the loyalist Conflict Transformation Initiative, which was to speed up UDA decommissioning, has laid bare potentially destructive tensions at the heart of the Stormont Executive barely five months after it was set up.
Yesterday's meeting of the Executive was a highly charged affair with disputes over an Irish language Bill, next week's budget and the future of water charges already to the fore.
Imagine the scene then of Ms Ritchie sitting across the table from Finance Minister Peter Robinson, who suggested in the Assembly this week she was acting illegally and in breach of her ministerial code.
She lost no time in returning fire in face of his withering criticism with the barbed query: "I'm not sure whether he's asking this question as a Minister of Finance or the person who likes to think he controls the Executive." She also told the Assembly she had been the victim of "a sustained campaign of briefing against me and attempts to destabilise those around me".
By whom she did not say in public. Pressure, although some of it well-intentioned she says, also came from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Áras an Uachtaráin. Add to that figures such as US special envoy Paula Dobriansky and it is easy to see why the SDLP Minister had felt alone in her conviction that the UDA will string along any politician unless they are bold enough to challenge them.
This dispute highlights two serious difficulties - how a mandatory executive coalition of four diverse parties does its business, and how the UDA, the largest of Northern Ireland's paramilitary groups, is to be brought irreversibly into the constitutional fold.
To take these in turn, it appears the issue of joint executive and individual ministerial function is far from sorted. Mr Robinson's most serious allegations concern the way in which Ms Ritchie announced her decision. He claims she has broken the ministerial code and the pledge of office whereas she feels motivated enough by this accusation to state she "will not be bullied" by him and that he acts as if he "controls the Executive". Heavy stuff.
Indeed there was a collective sigh of relief when Sinn Féin and the DUP agreed to share power, with many observers (especially those resident outside Northern Ireland) choosing to believe that the Northern problem was now effectively resolved. What has become clear, as this week's events show, is that hitherto implacable enemies agreeing to share office does not guarantee stable government. Perhaps Alliance leader David Ford is right when he alleges that the current executive arrangement is not about powersharing (working together) at all, but rather power-splitting (a carve-up).
The Assembly does not have a formal role for an opposition. Therefore what opposition there is to any given measure has to come from within. In normal parliamentary set-ups this is called a split and it appears there is no push to patch up this damaging split around the Stormont executive table at this point.
The issue which led to such a split is arguably even more pressing. It is now 13 years and one week since the loyalist paramilitaries called their ceasefire and offered "abject and true remorse". Their statement included the observation: "the permanence of our ceasefire will be completely dependent upon the continued cessation of all nationalist/republican violence, the sole responsibility for a return to war lies with them".
With republicans having opted for political power over paramilitarism, the UDA and others are now an epoch behind. Their actions have evolved from self-proclaimed idealism into organised crime organised by a handful of Mr Bigs who feud among themselves. The irony is now that it is these organisations who are outside the political consensus, when they stated so fervently at the outset they supported the peace process. At the same time the main unionist parties are now top of the pile having been the foot-dragging sceptics.
The UDA, a chasm away from constitutionalism, has only the Ulster Political Research Group. Frankie Gallagher, its prominent voice, has the unenviable task of providing coherent political leadership to an element that appears not to want to be led anywhere.
The previous Direct Rule team thought it worthwhile to help tempt them in from the cold with a £1.2 million contract to help ease loyalist suburban blight with decommissioning conditions attached. Ritchie disagreed at the time, but says she sought space to give the idea a chance when she inherited it after devolution in May. That chance vanished amid the UDA violence in Carrickfergus and Bangor last summer followed by the chief constable's claims that he "wouldn't give the UDA 50p" and that the link between government cash and decommissioning was "false".
Ritchie now faces hostility inside the Executive and, she contends, in the Civil Service. Why else would a Minister contend: "it has always been my understanding that ministers make decisions and civil servants implement them"? All of this comes on foot of the DUP promise that this Executive would be different from that led by "push-over unionist" David Trimble. They promised that nationalist ministers would never be given the latitude to go on "solo runs" and that Assembly and executive powers would keep them in check.
Expect Peter Robinson to fight back. Expect Margaret Ritchie, with public opinion seemingly on her side, to stand her ground and even resign if necessary. Expect also for this one to run and run.