With remembering there is reminding. Saturday’s public row over health minister Robin Swann’s request for military assistance as part of the Covid-19 response is the wrong…
Author: Brian Rowan
Brian Rowan
Brian Rowan is a journalist/author. A former BBC correspondent in Belfast, four times he has been a category winner in the Northern Ireland Press and Broadcast Awards. He is the author of several books on the peace process. His latest book (published by Merrion Press) POLITICAL PURGATORY – the battle to save Stormont and the play for a New Ireland is now available at www.merrionpress.ie
A PAST PROCESS WITHOUT PRISON - IS IT AN AMNESTY? A team of legacy experts has produced a detailed analysis paper on options for addressing the…
That opening thought comes from a unionist source, and is a reference to Michelle O’Neill’s public criticism of Health Minister Robin Swann and his department in…
Right now the virus is winning. We read that in the daily totals of the dead; in the grim and frightening figures that are the story…
SUNDAY MARCH 29th 2020: I thought about going to the shops and, then, I thought better of it. All of a sudden, the simple things of…
In our spaces and places we have too much time to think and to worry; yet in this world battle we have the easy parts. Yes,…
Wednesday’s legacy re-write by the UK Government is clearly designed to be the beginning of the end of Past investigations. If followed through, it is the end…
What we are reading in this latest government statement represents a significant shift in focus. It means there won’t be full-blown investigations into the 3000-plus conflict…
From a threat perspective, all of this talk about ‘shadowy figures’ and the IRA Army Council is viewed as “largely irrelevant”. “There’s no risk,” a security…
ESCAPING THE ADAMS INTERVIEW ROOM There will be those who will hate Gerry Kelly’s book - ‘Playing My Part’; hate it for the absence of any…
Julian Smith will be on the right side of the line when the book is eventually written on the breaking and making of Stormont. When he…
There are lessons from this election; the hard lesson for Fine Gael and Fianna Fail that you can’t have it both ways. It insults people’s intelligence…
They have name passes and telephones. If you look, you can see them - often walking and talking in the corridors of Stormont. In the canteen,…
Sinn Fein’s attendance at a PSNI recruitment event on Tuesday was neither seismic nor historic; not two decades-plus after the Patten Report on police reform, and…
After a decade-plus of consultation, negotiation, reports, recommendations, agreements and disagreements, 100 days feel like no time at all. Yet, within that calendar frame, we may…