February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The bomb was clearly the work of loyalists, unhappy with the progress of the peace process. Staff at Harryville Primary School in Ballymena, the constituency of unionist strongman Ian Paisley, found three pipe-bombs there last month, too.
In nearby Carnmoney, loyalists threatened recently to dig up Catholics buried in the municipal cemetery and urinate on their resting places.
One would imagine that this despicable bigotry, and the threat it poses to the lives and well-being of Irish citizens, would be the top item on the agenda when the two men met.
It was not.
Instead, the two governments ploughed ahead with their strategy of pandering to unionists in an attempt to woo them back into a power-sharing government.
Saying they would work towards restoring the North’s all-party administration “some time next year,” the two leaders welcomed the massive operations recently launched by the authorities to confiscate IRA assets.
Once again, much of the Irish media played along. RTE was particularly helpful, listing its report after 12 other stories with the headline “Small bomb defused at Co. Antrim school.” Imagine, now, how the station would have scrambled its news staff to cover a “small” bomb in a school in Dublin, or New York.
The two governments are betting that if unionists can be nudged into sharing power with their neighbors, the anti-Catholic bigotry that forms part of their culture will vanish.
There is no evidence for this theory, and the gamble is being made with the lives of Irish citizens.