By John Spain

IT’S a bit like global warming, slow but inevitable. Inch by inch the permafrost between the two sides in Northern Ireland is melting.

In spite of the occasional cold shoulder, as one side or the other suddenly gets nervous, we are well on the way to a warm new future for the North. Sunshine at last!

To break the deadlock, as you know, the governments recently called both sides to a meeting at St. Andrews in Scotland, a neutral ground better known for golf than politics. More rough than fairways was found during the weekend talks, but even so there was no mistaking the new mood, especially from Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley.

Although the DUP would not negotiate directly with Sinn Fein, the old man got quite emotional at his press conference after the talks, insisting that it was time to build a new peaceful future for all the children of the North. Clearly he feels that his time is limited and he wants to move on.

There was no agreement as such between the parties at St. Andrews, other than a general acceptance all around that it was time to take the next step. The St. Andrews Agreement so-called was actually a roadmap produced by the two governments for discussion at the talks.

It was an agreement about how an agreement could be made in the future. No one rejected it, so you could say that the sequence and timetable it contained were accepted. Which I suppose you could call an agreement of sorts, although no one signed on any dotted lines.

The elaborate sequence will culminate next March (or so) with the beginning of a new Assembly and power-sharing administration. To get there involves an elaborate series of steps by both sides designed to get around arguments about who needs to move first.

And that is still the problem. Sinn Fein won’t support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and the DUP won’t share power with them until they do.

Sinn Fein says it wants responsibility for policing to be shifted to the new Assembly before it can support the PSNI. But the DUP says that Sinn Fein has to demonstrate its commitment to democracy and the rule of law first by accepting the PSNI before power-sharing can start.

It’s like the chicken and the egg. Which comes first? You might think this is funny. But no, it’s just Northern Ireland. And that is what the St. Andrews Agreement is all about. Separating the chickens and the eggs.

Straight away it ran into problems when Paisley decided not to attend a subsequent Program Committee meeting with Gerry Adams, which was only a meeting about procedures, not substantial issues.

That failure is seen as tactical rather than serious, given the new mood around. It was understandable in a way, since Paisley was not about to hand an easy instant victory to Adams.

Far more important are the next steps, with the nomination next month of Paisley and Martin McGuinness by their parties as first and deputy first ministers, in a shadow capacity. (I like this one — it sidesteps any need for the DUP to vote for McGuinness!)

This is to be followed with a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (party convention) to back the PSNI, and that would open the way to the new power-sharing administration. And along the way, the whole deal will get the backing of the electorate.

But of course, since we’re talking about Northern Ireland, this choreography could end up in a knot. Given Paisley’s new forgiving mood, I don’t think this is likely, but you never know.

Much has been made about Sinn Fein’s apparent willingness to move on policing. But the details of this will have to be watched carefully, unless some Nationalist areas in the North are to end up with the local heavies who now control the estates being metamorphosed into the local police.

And one can understand the DUP’s need to be convinced that Sinn Fein are fully committed to democracy and not some fascist variation of their own invention. The DUP — both Paisley and other senior figures — have emphasized that everything depends on Sinn Fein’s full acceptance of democracy and the rule of law.

That means an end to all criminality — even the clean stuff like cross-border smuggling and tax frauds — something that some IRA men are finding it difficult to accept. It’s kind of beneath their dignity to work for a living, you see.

All it would take is one IRA robbery (sanctioned or not) to upset the balance, and it would not have to be on the same scale as the Northern Bank job to wreck the process. Speaking of which, the ongoing investigation by the Gardai (police) and the PSNI after that robbery two years ago has now established a definite IRA link.

Just last week the Gardai revealed that marks on cash seized by them when they uncovered money-laundering operations being run by people with IRA and Sinn Fein connections have now linked the cash to the Northern Bank in Belfast. These forensic tests have taken some time and involved painstaking examination of individual notes. It’s too early to say whether there is enough evidence to bring people to trial, but this one is not over by a long way.

There are also ongoing investigations by the Criminal Assets Bureau here into the alleged property empire of the former Provisional IRA chief of staff, Tom (Slab) Murphy, and his associates. Again, in spite of Sinn Fein attempts to ridicule this, it’s not going away, you know.

During the raid on Slab Murphy’s farm, the Gardai also found money and checks worth around a million euro and that was frozen by the High Court a few months ago. Thousands of documents and several laptop computers, hidden under bales of hay, were also found and the information they contained is still being worked on.

If either the Northern Bank or Slab Murphy investigations reveal direct IRA/Sinn Fein links to large amounts of cash, the DUP will have a problem. During the St. Andrews meeting, senior DUP figures said that the IRA not only had to end all criminality, but also had to give up the proceeds of that criminality.

Why bring this up now? Because the DUP are concerned — just like political parties in the south — that Sinn Fein might be able to use large amounts of cash from the IRA’s criminal past to fight future elections on both sides of the Border. That is not an excuse for the DUP to say no; it is a legitimate concern about the corruption of democracy.

It is true that the end of the IRA campaign has brought an unprecedented chance of a new peaceful future for the North. But that does not mean that there are no unresolved issues there which have yet to be sorted out.

Of course, the inclination of everyone will be to let sleeping dogs lie. The achievement of a permanent settlement in the North is a prize big enough to warrant that.

But there are limits. And Sinn Fein has to understand that the primary responsibility for making this work does rest with them.

Everyone wants to make this work, not least the British and Irish governments who have committed huge amounts of money to the North to give a new administration the very best chance, if a deal is done.

The British government will put in several billions. And the Irish government (taxpayers like me) will be putting in at least one billion euro, an enormous sum which is sure to raise eyebrows here where schools and hospitals are still in desperate need of funding.

It’s the price of peace. It’s very high. And there will be a lot of people in the south who have been fed up with the North for years and who will deeply resent having to pay the bill.

So Sinn Fein have no reason to believe that they are the only ones who will be asked to make sacrifices.