Foot-and-mouth showed devolution worked - bishop

The Church of Ireland Bishop of Connor, the Right Rev James Moore, has said that the foot-and-mouth crisis in the North showed how devolved government could deal "effectively and acceptably" with such crises.

"Collaborative government in this and many other matters has been shown to work. It must mean putting ideologies on the back burner while dealing with practical issues of government," he said

But ideologies and "difficult, contentious issues surrounding matters like policing and the need for all paramilitary organisations to decommission weapons will not go away and have to be addressed until solutions are found."

People continued "to feel the threat of IRA weapons despite assurances that they are not to be used. There surely must be a sinister purpose for keeping them," he said. Where loyalist arms were concerned there was evidence that some loyalists realised the serious damage being done to Protestant communities and were prepared to look at ways of stopping this, he said.

Drumcree "looms threateningly ahead of us" he said. He appealed for order and discipline in the North this July. "I feel that Drumcree needs to be localised so that the people most directly involved in this difficult confrontation may be released from other pressures to search for a way out of the dilemma," he said.

The police, `who suffer each year because of Drumcree" were "becoming more and more fed up and demoralised" especially when, despite good policing during the Troubles, "the RUC has become a victim of change."