In 2011, the then Stormont minister for Social Development, Alex Attwood, announced that some 200 houses were to be built in north Belfast, on the former Girdwood Barracks site. The plan was met with outrage and was branded as ‘deeply destabilising’ by the largest party in Stormont, the DUP.

During the recent ‘community relations week’ in the Six Counties (May 12-19), various Stormont ministers, MLAs, members of publicly-funded quangos, media commentators and others, all queued up to address the problem of “sectarianism within society”.

On Tuesday [May 8], the Six County Assembly again demonstrated its primary purpose as a rubber-stamp mechanism for implementing British government policy when its members voted to approve the Pensions Bill.