JOHN Swinney has “no intention” of apologising after he urged people to “move on” from the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The First Minister was speaking to The Herald newspaper last week after his party’s election victory and was asked about potential dealings with Sinn Fein as a result of the three devolved administrations of the UK having pro-independence parties in leading roles.

The First Minister recognised his dealings with the party, whose vice president Michelle O’Neill is First Minister of Northern Ireland, had caused some “media consternation”, but he added: “I really do think people have got to move on.”

Families of Scots killed in the Troubles hit out at the comments, telling the same newspaper the First Minister should apologise.

But speaking on Monday, the First Minister said: “I have no intention of apologising for that.

“Sinn Fein are an elected administration in Northern Ireland, and I deal with elected politicians.”

Asked if his language was sloppy, he added: “I think the issues that are involved in the peace process have involved people moving on, people have had to move on, that’s exactly what they’ve done, and I’m simply reflecting what’s happened.”

Speaking to The National's podcast, Sinn Fein MP John Finucane said "nobody has anything to fear" from the party, adding that O'Neill had worked to show she is a first minister for all.

"I will never be disrespectful or insensitive to those who have suffered loss as a result of our conflict," he said.

"I would never do that because I know exactly what that feels like. But I understand the context and the motivation behind what John Swinney has said.

"Nobody has anything to fear from a Sinn Fein MP for North Belfast. I am here to represent everybody in North Belfast whether they voted for me or whether they didn't.

"Michelle O'Neill has described herself as a first minister for all and has taken some extraordinary steps to show that in action not just in words, whether that's meeting with the British royal family or attending commemoration events, for example, around the Somme."

Following this month’s election, the largest parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland support leaving the UK, which has sparked co-operation between the SNP, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru.

“I am very happy to take forward collaboration with Sinn Fein and with Plaid Cymru as administrations led by nationalists who want to take forward their agenda,” the First Minister said.

“There is a lot that has happened in the years since the Troubles came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement.

“I respect entirely anybody who has suffered as a consequence of the Troubles, I respect what they have experienced and in no way does the political co-operation that I would take forward today undermine the respect I have for those individuals.”

https://www.thenational.scot/news/26117026.john-swinney-stands-sinn-fein-comments-backlash/

At what point are citizens in the North entitled to say they do not want to live in a country run by Farage?

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/05/12/nigel-farages-success-makes-irelands-failure-to-plan-for-the-future-irresponsible/

There was a British government-sponsored TV ad in the 1990s that people my age often remember, with amusement but also nostalgia. Two boys get to know each other, playing football and generally messing about. It emerges – as if it wasn’t obvious already – that they are from different sides of the North’s divide when, respectively, a GAA medal and an Orange Order badge fall out of their pockets. A Van Morrison song plays amiably in the background and the whole thing concludes with him saying, in his unmistakable drawl: “Wouldn’t it be great if it was like all the time?”

It speaks to a yearning for the sense – widespread in the 1990s – of hope for an emerging peace and potential reconciliation to follow. Both hopes were fulfilled; sadly the latter much less so than the former. Nostalgia is a fact of life, but it has become too much a fact of politics. And not just in Trump’s America or Brexit Britain. In parts of establishment Ireland, there is a marked tendency to hark back to the 1990s when the question of this island’s constitutional future is raised.

Put more directly, there is a tendency by Irish ministers to deflect any and all questions about planning for constitutional change with a general, sometimes impatient entreaty to get more out of the Belfast Agreement institutions as created in 1998. This desire is noble and right: every day as leader of the official opposition in the Northern Ireland Assembly, my party and I are trying to force improvements in the North’s challenged political institutions.

But after last week’s election results in Britain, continuing to avoid serious engagement with how change in England, Scotland and Wales could precipitate change on the island of Ireland starts to look like negligence rather than just nostalgia. Political reporting runs on hyperbole, but it is no exaggeration to say the results have fundamentally altered the political shape of Britain.

The Irish Government has been rightly keen to emphasise the repointing of an Anglo-Irish relationship weakened by the Brexit years. There have been cordial summits and joint press conferences that really have seemed like a 1990s revival. But the election results indicate that the Brexit years haven’t really passed at all. Britain, particularly England, is still defined by profound divisions and anger to which no government appears able to adequately respond. Certainly not Keir Starmer’s.

Starmer may be replaced as leader by despairing Labour MPs, but if he is not, the next most likely prime minister is certain to have a radically different approach to Northern Ireland and British-Irish relations. That is of course Nigel Farage, a man who cares so deeply about sensitive questions in Northern Ireland that he performed an “Up the Ra” salutation in a Cameo video for a small fee. His party’s Brexit spokesperson, Danny Kruger, told the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice conference that the party would complete the so-called “unfinished business” of Brexit by reopening EU-UK agreement on the Irish Border. They take a predictably trenchant line on protecting British veterans from accountability over unlawful Troubles killings.

All this is merely to list the various profound policy challenges a Reform-led government would present for the North and British-Irish relations. But there is a deeper question: at what point are citizens in the North entitled to say they do not want to live in a country run by Farage? That question goes far beyond the constituency traditionally defined as nationalist, and includes many people – and many in my constituency from unionist backgrounds – who are horrified at the prospect of a UK run by and for the coterie of charlatans and spivs that surround Farage.

These are the kinds of people whose Irish passport forms I sign regularly. Whatever view they have on our constitutional future – and there is a fascinating spectrum of views far beyond the traditional binary – many have been encouraged to think of the Irish State in new ways in recent years. They haven’t just applied for passports to avoid queues on their summer holidays, they have seen the investments of the Shared Island Fund as an alternative to the sclerosis at Stormont. And seen the relative sanity of politics in Dublin, notwithstanding all its challenges, as an alternative to the sometimes literal insanity of the last decade in British politics.

Rather than seeing it as an aggressive destabilisation of the North, people like this – many of them now Irish citizens – might want and expect a responsible Irish Government to be planning for change on this island that may be forced by events on the one next door.

Sam McBride and Fintan O’Toole’s landmark book, For and Against a United Ireland, posits potential scenarios in which a Farage-led government chooses for reasons of its own to force the question of a Border poll. The fact that it is hard to predict how Farage would act in office is its own argument for proper planning for all scenarios. And even if Reform is not put in government, the elections have underlined that the UK is a fundamentally more unstable and unpredictable entity than it was in 1998, even if we would wish it otherwise. And it is much poorer, with Brexit costing at least £100 billion a year in lost economic activity – a gap which is exacerbating pressure on public services, including north of the Border.

While it is misguided and even irresponsible to arbitrarily name dates for a referendum – something Sinn Féin has made a habit of – it is its own form of irresponsibility to act as if we can forever delay practical preparation.

My sister in law, a highly effective campaigning lawyer, enjoys keeping old episodes of Friends on in the background at home. Some nice, harmless ’90s nostalgia does no harm – but nostalgia cannot be a substitute for facing the world as it is, or taking responsibility for the future we want.

Matthew O’Toole MLA is leader of the Opposition in the NI Assembly

Crown Estate would pocket 4% of sales projected at up to £500m a year as questions raised over local jobs and tax benefits

King Charles’ estate would make millions through royalty payments if a planned west Tyrone goldmine went ahead, an inquiry into the proposals has heard.

Projected sales from the proposed mining scheme could reportedly be as high as £500 million per year, although this would depend on fluctuations in the price of gold, according to The Detail.

The Crown Estate, a property portfolio worth billions owned by the British monarch, would receive 4 percent of the mine’s annual gold sales, according to an economics expert hired by the company behind the plans, Dalradian Gold.

A portion of those royalties would go to fund the royal family, which legally owns almost all gold and silver deposits in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Another royalty would go towards an Irish company called Minco Plc, which Dalradian acquired in 2017.

“There’s a separate 2% [royalty] for Minco. But that’s [now] been bought out [by Dalradian].”

The revelations came on an inquiry day during which Dalradian conceded neither it nor any other interested parties had hired a forensic accountant, a specific kind of financial expert, to scrutinise the company’s plans for a project on which it has placed a £21-26 billion valuation.

Beyond these more granular financial questions, there was debate over the fiscal revenues the planned goldmine would create.

Andrew Hunt, an economics consultant hired by Dalradian, told the inquiry that Dalradian’s mine would generate “FTSE 100 levels of corporation tax”.

But third-party objectors and representatives for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council (FODC) argued much of this tax revenue would not make its way back to the local area or to Northern Ireland.

A FODC representative said these revenues were not guaranteed to flow back into the area.

“This corporation tax will go to the UK Exchequer, and the UK government can choose to do with that whatever it likes,” he said.

“It can choose to spend it on defence, the NHS…or to reduce the [overall Westminster budget] deficit. There is absolutely no guarantee that money would flow back to Northern Ireland, let alone to the Fermanagh and Omagh local district.”

A notable point of contention was Dalradian’s promise to train and employ local people who are currently out of work.

Conor Fegan, a barrister acting for the council, argued that the company’s draft plan to train and provide jobs for unemployed local people was “long on promises and short on detail”.

But the mining company defended its proposition, citing an “action plan” it says it has developed to tackle unemployment in the surrounding district.

Mr Hunt told the inquiry he “refuse[d] to accept” that some of an estimated 1,000 unemployed people in the council area “could not be assisted into work” through Dalradian’s planned mine.

He cited large-scale infrastructure projects in Britain, including the 2012 Olympic Games and the Sizewell C nuclear facility, which he said had “exceeded targets for recruitment”.

Mr Fegan also questioned Dalradian’s binding obligations towards training, noting what he said was the repeated use of the phrase “‘we’ll use reasonable endeavours’” in the firm’s employment plan. “It’s not ever going to be a hard commitment. It’s only ever going to be ‘reasonable endeavours’ on this.”

Keith Burge set out the area’s skills gap and challenges to rapid workforce training. “A very significant proportion of people who are unemployed or economically inactive have low levels of qualifications,” said Mr Burge, leading him to question the feasibility of Dalradian’s training claims.

He told the inquiry that a significant number of these people were suffering with health problems, were students, had care responsibilities or were retired.

“These are not people who, in most cases, are able or willing to retrain and gain qualifications allowing them to work, respectively, at this operation.”

Questions were also raised around the mine’s lifespan and what could happen if it closed earlier than initially forecast.

Citing a number of mining case studies in Australia, third-party objector Sean Tracey asked whether “abrupt or early closure” of Dalradian’s planned mine, projected to operate for 20-25 years, was a likely prospect.

Commissioner McKeary said there are a number of questions around such a scenario to which she intends to return.

Concluding the day’s session, Commissioner McKeary said: “We’re slightly more than halfway through.” She added that the inquiry is still to hear submissions on carbon monetisation, social impacts, policing, community, distribution, and socio-economic considerations.

The inquiry continues.

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/king-charles-set-to-profit-from-west-tyrone-goldmine-inquiry-hears-5QVEMKM5IJG5TIXHHWIETXOP3Q/

What is the use of going back into the Stormont arrangements again in 2027 when they don’t deliver on anything?

SINN Féin’s ard fheis at the weekend was a success – up to a point.

The return to Belfast after seven years allowed them to demonstrate with up to 1,700 delegates present that they are not only the largest party in the north by far in membership, and in council, assembly and Westminster seats, but also the largest and richest party on the island.

Mary Lou McDonald made a characteristically masterful speech attacking the Dublin government, appealing for support in next month’s by-elections in Dublin and Galway and strongly endorsing the campaign for a referendum on reunification.

Michelle O’Neill made a very good speech, very good because for the first time in ages a senior Sinn Féin figure actually attacked the DUP, which is what the party faithful want and need to hear.

“The DUP want to turn the clock back. They are attempting to block and delay progress on issues that would make a real difference to people here.”

The fact is that the DUP doesn’t only attempt to block progress but has succeeded.

O’Neill said: “They yearn for the days of unionist misrule… We are not going backwards; we are only going forwards.”

Nope. The central problem is that Sinn Féin isn’t.

It’s because of the DUP that there is no progress, nor will there be.

It’s because of the DUP that politics in the north is in the doldrums.

Stormont is a Potemkin assembly, a façade with self-important Ruritanian rules and procedures that achieves nothing.

Furthermore, the DUP has neutered the North South Ministerial Council by, yes, you’ve guessed it, blocking everything.

Dublin’s Shared Island project simply bypasses the NSMC and finances joint initiatives across a wide range of fields, from tourism to infrastructure to funding student nursing places.

Despite its slide in the polls here in the last couple of years, Sinn Féin will emerge again as the largest party in councils and the assembly next year, especially with more and more young nationalist voters on the register.

It’s not only the growing number of nationalist voters in the north but the very fact of DUP misbehaviour will energise the Sinn Féin vote.

You wonder do the party pay Gordon Lyons a weekly retainer to keep antagonising their supporters. He’s as successful in this as Arlene Foster was.

Now, here’s the question. Since the DUP refuse to operate the structures of the Good Friday Agreement, which admittedly they’ve always opposed, what is the point of the Stormont Assembly if it can’t deliver anything but provoke ridicule from people here?

Yes, Sinn Féin will be the largest party next year. And what? Will the DUP behave any differently?

They might even behave worse, because the TUV will win more seats.

Michelle O’Neill said Sinn Féin is up for reform of the structures, but the DUP will block any reform, which anyway couldn’t happen before next year’s election.

Do you seriously believe the DUP would cooperate with any reform?

Fundamentally, Sinn Féin underestimates the DUP’s fear and loathing of them, which is manifest in the constant sniping, blocking, nastiness, contempt, obstruction, resistance, ill-will.

O’Neill’s attempts to be a ‘First Minister for all’ by attending both republican commemorations and British commemorations, like Armistice Day or royal funerals, are spurned and dismissed.

There is no reciprocation, no acknowledgement, no credit given.

What Sinn Féin call their ‘base’ notices all this and the perpetual, relentless attacks on any manifestation of Irishness and grow anxious for senior Sinn Féin figures to hit back.

It seems all one-way traffic. Why is there no-one on the media to hit back? What does docility achieve?

More importantly, what is the strategy? Where does it all lead?

What is the use of going back into the Stormont arrangements again in 2027 when they don’t deliver on anything?

Back to the question. What is the point of the Stormont Assembly, except to perpetuate partition, which is the cause of the problem?

Since the British abolished the unionist regime in 1972, their priority (ably assisted by Dublin) has been to recreate a partition administration on a basis of equity and get out quick to let this place fester.

How many attempts have there been since 1973? Each one has collapsed.

Its latest iteration since 1998 has been inactive longer than operating.

Yet, the British and Irish governments try to keep a partition assembly going at all costs. Paying the antagonists to do nothing, throwing money at them, tweaking the rules; all to no avail.

There has been no progress at all since they reconvened Stormont in 2020. Indeed, some of the new rules were never implemented.

The 1921 partition assembly never worked. Its successors never worked and never will.

You know what they say about repeating the same experiment and expecting a different result.

https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/brian-feeney-its-time-for-sinn-fein-to-give-up-on-this-failing-assembly-FYC4LJPB5NA67DHTXNXLKXUK6U/