Politics

Recently I passed through Belfast International Airport at a busy time, 8am, heading for a 10am flight.

Lord Empey has warned against believing unproven allegations against former US peace envoy George Mitchell regarding his involvement with American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

IRA members would not accept the organisation handing over its weapons to be decommissioned, a senior RUC officer told the NIO in January 1995.

By the early 1990s, civil servants, ministers and the tourism industry were increasingly concerned about the off-putting appearance of the security installations along the border, according to newly-declassified government files.

A current Sinn Féin TD who represented the party in its first meetings of “exploratory dialogue” with NIO officials in 1995 delivered a “crisp lecture” about how the British would have to pay “reparations” after Irish unity.

Northern Ireland’s chief electoral officer estimated that perhaps half of all postal votes cast in the 1992 General Election were fraudulent – and most of that was not by Sinn Féin, declassified files reveal.

A Newtownabbey Ukip representative has defended a post he made on social media this week regarding “unvaccinated immigrants” coming to the United Kingdom.

Martin McGuinness told civil servants that the IRA was “nothing to do with Sinn Fein”, according to the NIO minute of the first talks with the party in December 1994.

Exploratory dialogue with the political parties representing loyalist paramilitaries involved the PUP’s David Ervine expressing concern at the absence of the “controllers of morality” from some loyalist areas.

Martin McGuinness was keen to set up a secondary process for two republicans to discuss issues with civil servants, NIO minutes reveal – but that was hidden from the US and Irish governments.

In their call for the victim commissioner to be replaced, it is clear once again that the DUP is playing catch up with Ulster Unionist policies.

I have no idea what is going to happen over Brexit.

Declassified government files show that senior civil servants privately told Sinn Fein in 1995 that decommissioned weapons may not be forensically tested – a policy which police now say makes it far harder to solve Troubles atrocities.

Politics on the Island of Ireland is changing. The emergence of Fine Gael in Northern Ireland over the last year is a product of that shifting political landscape.

The historic first meeting of ‘exploratory dialogue’ between British officials and Sinn Fein began with Martin McGuinness attempting to unsettle his hosts.

DUP proposals to introduce a curfew in Northern Ireland during the Troubles were rejected by the government, official files reveal.

British officials believed that the Irish government’s decision to meet Gerry Adams shortly after the IRA ceasefire showed “indecent haste”, declassified files reveal.

The first time that a UK minister, Michael Ancram, led talks with Sinn Fein was on May 10 1995.