Ruane calls on MLAs to become team players

The Ulster Unionists and SDLP were urged to start behaving like team players in the Stormont assembly by Education Minister Caitriona Ruane on the 19th June as she saw off an attempt to commit her to a policy of offering every student teacher in the North a one-year post.

The DUP backed a Sinn Fein amendment which kicked the proposal into touch by agreeing to consider implementing the scheme, identical to one which operates in Scotland, only once a review of government spending at Stormont had been completed.

So, not only are Sinn Fein unable to compete in radicalism with the cosmetic reforms of Scottish labour or the routine barbs of other right-wing parties in Stormont, Ms Ruane is able to offer a convincing reason for their failure. She urged the Unionists and SDLP not to commit the executive in Assembly votes to schemes without taking into account the constraints on ministers` budgets – that is, to spare Sinn Fein and recognise that she holds a comic-opera ministry where the British control the budget!

Posted by North