Flags issue high on political agenda

Protesters picketed the Department of Health

BBC NI's political editor Stephen Grimason looks back on the week in which the issue of flags was flying high on the political agenda.

You would think Northern Ireland's politicians would be easing themselves into the summer holidays by now - avoiding any undue stress and strain.

But the past week has shown there is still plenty of political testosterone around.

The whole flags and emblems issue got another high profile outing on Friday on the occasion of the Queen Mother's 100th birthday.

Bairbre de Brun was targeted by protesters on Thursday

Sinn Fein ministers would not fly the union flag on their buildings, cue protests.

But the protest came from a rather unlikely source.

Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionists organised a picket outside the offices of Sinn Fein Health Minister Bairbre de Brun.

Mr Hutchinson has been a long term critic of what he calls "in your face republicanism" which is his description of Sinn Fein's public campaigns on key issues.

He is now responsible for "in your face loyalism" and says he is doing it quite deliberately to give republicans what he considers to be a dose of their own medicine.

Republicans, however, have played a clever hand of PR poker this week by making sure the new regional development minister Gregory Campbell of the DUP received a polite welcome on the nationalist lower Ormeau Road in Belfast when he made an official visit there to see for himself the flooding problems in the area.

No one was rude to him and local people were only strident in their criticism of his department on the flooding issue.

The Union Flag is fown on designated days

Contrast that with the rough treatment handed out to the health minister, Bairbre de Brun of Sinn Fein, when she made an official visit to the Lagan Valley Hospital in Lisburn.

Protestors, including DUP councillors, made sure she knew she was in what they considered to be loyalist territory, complete with eggs and flour.

When invited to comment on the wildly differing receptions, Mr Campbell offered the opinion that since he had been invited to the lower Ormeau the people there clearly wanted to see him whereas Ms de Brun had not been invited by local residents in Lisburn.

The flags and emblems issue, which is politically joined at the hip with the parades controversy, has managed to keep the political pot simmering.

Northern Ireland is probably the only country in the world that dreads the summer.

While Drumcree is for the moment in the rearview mirror there is still the potential of trouble in Londonderry where the Apprentice Boys organisation is due to hold its main parade later this month.

Key figures in the mediation process are making a lot of positive noises about the prospects for a deal, although as usual the whole issue will hang in the balance until the last moment.

If there is an accommodation, however, the man in the hot seat for next year's Drumcree parade, South African mediator Brian Currin, might just have a handy template from which to draw inspiration.