Day 7

Today we had the fortune of being given a tour of Stormont. As special guests, we were granted actual access to MPs from a few different parties, a question and answer session, and a chance to sit in on a session of the legislative assembly. The actual building of Stormont was a wonder of architecture. In many ways, it was like a larger version of Belfast City Hall. It too had lots of Italian marble and elaborate chandlers. However, the grounds of the building are what really set it apart. Stormont sits atop a very large hill and features a driveway the length of several football fields and lined with beautiful native flora and fauna. Complimentary to the building itself, the Stormont grounds are perfectly symmetrical on either side of the drive. The building faces due south as an insulting gesture to Dublin and the government of the Republic of Ireland. Stormont was used as a safe haven for Allied forces in WWII and was covered in manure to provide cover from Axis bombings.

For the end of the tour, the group was taken into the balcony of the legislative assembly hall to hear and see live debates over issues facing Northern Ireland at the moment. The seats in the rooms were arranged by party affiliation with Unionists on one side and Nationalists on the other. The debates were structured in this way: a Minister (we were there for the Minister of Social Development) would present a number of pre-assigned questions. The minister would give his opening statements and then open the floor for debate. The minister would then respond to each point and move on to the next question with each question taking about 7 minutes to debate. During the debates, the MPs who were not speaking looked very distracted. Many of them were on their phones, iPads, thumbing through paper work, or having side-sessions with other MPs. In fact, one of the male MPs motioned to Kelly in a flirtatious way seemingly asking for her phone number. How inappropriate! Some of the questions debated:

- Housing laws
- Gambling
- Youth Justice
- Sectarianism, and defining what qualifies as a hate crime
- The legal aid system and equal access to legal representation
- Full body scanners in prisons

Following our observation of the legislative assembly, we met with a few MPs individually and were armed with pre-written questions for them to address. First, we met with a man called Pat Ramsey from the Social Democratic and Labour Party. SDLP is a moderate party which emphasizes greater political cooperation between the north and south. As such, Ramsey took us through a brief history of Ireland from the start of the Troubles until the present and spoke mostly of the peacemakers along the way. Specifically, Ramsey highlighted the work of John Humme, an Irish politician who helped to bring Republicans into the fold politically. Humme was a peacemaker who believed that political unification could transcend the physical boundary separating Ireland and Northern Ireland. Also, Ramsey spoke about the crucial role of Bill Clinton in the Good Friday peace agreements of 1998. Representing the moderate SDLP, Ramsey appropriately minimized the role of paramilitary groups in modern day Northern Ireland. Ramsey stated that there are small factions of sectarian groups intent on carrying out paramilitary acts, but that these groups are not representative of the sentiment of the country as a whole.

Next, we met with a member of the Sinn Fein Party called Raymond McCartney. Sinn Fein is Ireland's largest nationalist party. During the times of the Troubles, the party supported the IRA in their "armed struggle." With the expectation that we would be meeting with a member of the Sinn Fein party, I had in mind an extreme, radical, charismatic figure. Raymond McCartney was not that. He was an unimposing, seemingly orthodox politician. The ideas he expressed were not dissimilar to the ideas one might hear from any U.S. politician. McCartney (although he is a former political prisoner who has a mural painted of him in his home town of Derry in honor of his hunger strike protest against British internment), spoke of such micro level, benign issues as education, job creation, and foreign investment as methods by which Northern Ireland can overcome its current recession. My question for him had to do with youth involvement in politics. I mentioned that we had been to the Belfast City Hall the day before and met their 26 year old mayor (also a member of Sinn Fein). I asked if it was a sign that young people were becoming more involved in politics and, if so, how it has changed the dynamics of the political dialogue in the country. McCartney said that Sinn Fein has gone to great lengths to ensure that their party includes young people as a way to maintain viability and embrace fresh ideas. Furthermore, he said that the party embraces all types of diversity, as it enriches the party by diversifying the pool of ideas. We shook hands with Mr. McCartney, took a photo, and exited Stormont by way of their lovely driveway.