Robinson returns as First Minister
PETER Robinson returns as First Minister prior to another crucial meeting of the DUP Assembly team.
As talks continue over the impasse over the devolution of policing and justice, the DUP Assembly team are expected to reconvene to discuss the detail of any proposed deal.
Earlier this week, it was reported that as many as 14 MLAs aired their discontent with the proposals.
Within hours of Mr Robinson's return, the DUP was under pressure to publish the legal advice which the East Belfast MP said cleared him.
In an interview with the News Letter on the day after the BBC Spotlight programme about the Robinsons aired, Mr Robinson said that he would publish the advice himself, if Martin McGuinness agreed to it.
Speaking of the legal advice which he subsequently commissioned from Paul Maguire QC, Mr Robinson then said: "I will share my response with the Deputy First Minister and, if it is possible to do it – I suppose I probably need his (Martin McGuinness's) permission to do so – I am quite happy to make that public."
Last night the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers refused to disclose the advice and the DUP did not return phone calls on the issue.
On January 11, Mr Robinson announced that he was standing aside to clear his name and care for his ill wife Iris, in the wake of a BBC Spotlight investigation into the then Strangford MP's affair and financial involvement with a 19-year-old.
Since then, DUP Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster has been acting First Minister.
However, Mr Robinson has taken the lead role for the DUP in the protracted policing and justice talks at Hillsborough.
Yesterday Mr Robinson informed Assembly Speaker Willie Hay that he had "resumed exercising the functions of the First Minister".
In a statement, Mr Robinson said: "I welcome the QC's detailed advice which follows a thorough and comprehensive examination of all of the issues raised in the Spotlight programme; that on the material provided his considered view was that there were no breaches whatsoever by me of the Ministerial Code, the Ministerial Code of Conduct, the Pledge of Office and the seven principles of public life. His advice supports my consistent contention that I have acted at all times properly and in full compliance with my public duties."
However, it will take much longer for the completion of a series of other investigations into the Robinsons – by the House of Commons, Assembly, Castlereagh Borough Council and the PSNI.
Last night Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said that Mr Robinson's return could be an indication that a policing and justice deal is about to be announced.
"At the time when he stepped down, he said that he wanted time off to negotiate without the cares of office so obviously he must have concluded that the negotiations have been completed," he said.
In a statement, the UUP called for Mr Robinson to publish the legal advice upon which his return depended.
A spokesman said: "Mr Robinson has indicated that he has returned to office because his legal advice indicates that he has done nothing wrong. It would clearly be in the public interest for this legal opinion to be published in full."
Referring to internal DUP dissent at the current policing and justice proposals, a TUV spokesman claimed that Mr Robinson's return "may have more to do with an anxiety to reassert control over his divided party than the consequence of a single legal opinion".
And the spokesman said: "Will counsel's opinion now be published, along with the precise instructions on which it was based? This is important in the public interest. Also, is the public purse paying for this opinion?"
And SDLP leader Mark Durkan said that the legal opinion only answered the question which Mr Robinson had "set for himself". He said: "The decision of Peter Robinson to return to his post of First Minister is entirely predictable."
"He stepped aside to ease the pressure he was under at the time and to await the decision of an assessment he commissioned.
"The problem is that this legal opinion will not persuade many people as it was a device he created and sought for himself."
The BBC last night said in a statement that it stood by the Spotlight programme.
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Monday 28 May 2012
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