Preparing For Solutions

It was a year of preparations: a time when events moved towards a variety of resolutions, without quite reaching them

It was a year of preparations: a time when events moved towards a variety of resolutions, without quite reaching them. The North and the attempted settlement of its long-standing inter-communal differences dominated politics on the island, as is clear from the Review '98 supplement published with today's editions.

The Belfast Agreement was a tremendous political achievement and it restored the public's wavering faith in that fraught discipline. The Northern Ireland Assembly was established and, slowly and with difficulty, the North/South bodies followed. The appointment of a Northern Ireland executive remained on hold, as did the commitment of the IRA and other paramilitary groups to arms decommissioning. But, at close of year, hope survives that the remaining difficulties - immensely complex though they are - can be surmounted in the name of the people who voted in separate referendums for peace and a new beginning.

As the North lurched towards a resolution of its historic problems, the electorate of the South waited patiently for revelations concerning the seamy side of Irish politics and its relationship with big business. Although the Moriarty and Flood tribunals had been established in 1997 to examine, variously, the affairs of Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry and the construction and planning business in north County Dublin as it affected Mr Ray Burke and other politicians, they had not heard evidence in public. Legal challenges in the courts delayed matters, as did the reluctance of financial institutions, and some of the individuals and companies concerned, to cooperate with the tribunals.

By December, an extraordinary situation developed when Mr Justice Flood - on foot of a succession of "leaks" and reports in publications owned by the Independent Newspapers group - announced publicly that a deliberate attempt was being made to damage the tribunal and to prevent its work being brought to fruition. Mr Justice Flood said that in its attitude towards the tribunal, the Independent Newspapers group had behaved as if it was above the law .

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Meanwhile, the Coalition Government awaited a response from Eurostat, in Brussels, in connection with its proposal to divide the State into two economic regions for development purposes. Counties of the western seaboard, along with the Border and midlands regions, would retain Objective 1 status for EU structural and cohesion fund purposes until 2006, while the rest of the State would be treated as Objective 1 in transition. The change in policy, if agreed, would inevitably require the devolution of some economic and planning functions to the regions. And the EU Commissioner for Regional Development, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, has been urging maximum, rather than minimum, change in that regard. The development could represent a breaking of the administrative ice that has kept local development in stasis for so long.

The other event-in-progress was political. The union of Democratic Left and the Labour Party was endorsed by their members but formal consummation will not take place until February. The parties hope the Belfast Agreement will bring about a realignment of political thought on the island so that closer European integration, growing prosperity and a caring culture will give them the opportunity to lead the State's first left-of-centre government.

Hopes and aspirations. Achievements, disappointments and scandals. The year of 1998 gave birth and succour to them all. We will await outcomes in 1999.