Ashling Delahunt at Macdonald Realty 263-1911
MAY 2001_
'A Celtic-Supporting Republican Sympathiser'
BELFAST - Peter Robinson, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had accused Northern Ireland Secretary of State John Reid of being "a Celtic-supporting republican sympathiser" after he appealed for people to support the peace process.
Robinson also accused the minister, a Scot, of "outrageous interference" in local politics. In what was regarded as an appeal for voters to support pro-Good Friday Agreement parties in the forthcoming British general election, Reid had said this was not the time for people to stay at home.
Reid said if hard-nosed international business investors could see the benefits of the agreement, then so should the people of the North. "The most important people here aren't Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley, David Trimble, John Reid. They are the ordinary people who have been the victims of decades of misery and tragedy."
But Robinson said, "Unionists can see that the agreement has put republicans in the driving seat and will come out in their thousands to vote for unionists who are opposed to the endless stream of concessions. No amount of propaganda from a Celtic-supporting republican-sympathising minister will change that."
Reid's comments were welcomed by Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble who said it was clear the forthcoming election would be seen as a judgment on the agreement. - The Irish News
Allegation of RUC
Collusion in Finucane Murder
BELFAST - Allegations of conspiracy and collusion in the case of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane refuse to be quelled. Since the prominent nationalist lawyer was murdered in front of his wife and children in 1989, the case has been at the centre of claims that the security forces colluded with loyalists in the killing and then embarked on a campaign to cover up the murder and their involvement in it.
Now, a former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer has claimed that a cover-up had taken place. Former Detective Sergeant Johnston Brown claimed on an Insight program on Ulster Television that a taped confession of a loyalist involved in the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) killing of the Belfast solicitor at his Antrim Road home had been blocked by members of the RUC's Special Branch.
The program detailed the findings of five months of investigative journalism into the case.
Brown, who described himself as a reluctant whistle blower, said he felt he had no choice but to go public to set the record straight after 30 years as a police officer. He claimed the identity of the man who had boasted of the fact that he had murdered Finucane was known since 1991.
Another retired RUC officer told the program-makers that he had instructed his wife to "ensure there is a full investigation" into his death should he die in a car accident, while another said he "feared the Special Branch more than the Provisional IRA."
- Condensed from reports in The Irish News and the Irish Emigrant
Gap Closing Fast on Protestant Majority
BELFAST - The Protestant majority in Northern Ireland is expected to show a significant decrease after figures from a new census to be held later this month are released.
Catholics already account for an estimated 46 percent of the Northern population, but some statisticians are forecasting that there could be a Catholic majority by 2025. Sinn Fein has estimated that this change could happen as early as 2011.
In the past, census-taking has been fraught with difficulty, with many people not prepared to declare their religion. In the 1991 census, 18 percent of the population did not declare their religious affiliation.
In 1971, republicans burnt the census forms in protest over gerrymandering. In 1981, a census taker in Deny was shot dead. In 1991, republicans became more eager to register the growth of nationalist-voting Catholics as they chased an electoral mandate.
Two factors are seen as vital in deciding how the next statistics from the next census will balance out. There has been a rapid decline in the Catholic birth-rate, but immigration has swelled the population by 100,000 since 1991. - The Irish News
FEARS OF MASSIVE
URBAN SPRAWL IN DUBLIN
AREA
DUBLIN - More than 2.4 million people will live in a giant urban sprawl along the east coast of Ireland within 20 years, government planning experts predict. The overall population will soar by one million, reaching between 4.6 million and 4.8 million, and at least half of those will live in the greater Dublin area.
This would put massive new pressures on housing, commuting, transport and the environment in the region. Unless steps are taken now to spread growth and development around the country, an extra 800,000 people - an 80 percent population increase - will be living and working in an area stretching from Louth to Wicklow.
Boosted by migration, the arrival of refugees and natural growth, the numbers living in the Dublin region will mushroom by 40,000 per annum over the next five years alone. These startling predictions are highlighted in a government report which warns that unless a national strategy is designed to successfully spread the growth to other regions, Dublin will have to take "the lion's share" of the larger population.
The mushrooming of population in the Dublin region would also have serious consequences for other parts of the country. The midlands would be likely to suffer a continued drop in population while rural areas generally would lose their young people to the capital.
But Department of Environment experts predict that by switching just eight percent of the projected job growth from the Dublin region to other parts of the country, would have more beneficial effects. The southwest, under these conditions, would experience a 1 population growth of 250,000, the midwest 126,000 and the midlands, instead of losing people, would grow by 54,000.
The report, drawn up by department principal officer Finian Matthews, and presented at the National Housing Conference in Galway suggests there would be strong growth in other main cities. Cork would get an extra 75,000 people, Galway 23,000, Limerick another 69,000 and Wa-terford over 11,000.
But even if the national spatial strategy achieved its objective of spreading growth outside the east, the greater Dublin area, which includes parts of Wicklow, Kildare and Meath, would still sec its population rising by 500,000 to about 1.9 million because of the social and economic momentum.
The Government is now set to begin an intense period of consultation withsocial partners and regional and local interests. A new national strategy is then expected to be published before the end of the vear.
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