A question of trust
Unionists have been piling in to the former Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan over her remarks on yesterday's Woman's Hour suggesting that Protestants taught their children to distrust Catholics.
Although Mrs O'Loan has sought to clarify her comments, explaining that she was told this by others, rather than experiencing it first hand, the reaction has evoked memories of previous controversies over remarks from President McAleese and Father Alec Reid.
Ian Paisley Junior has accused Mrs O'Loan of engaging in an anti-Protestant fest, whilst Jim Allister demanded to know what she taught her own children.
On the Nolan show some Protestant callers denied any Protestant parent did such a thing, but others rang in with personal testimony supporting Mrs O'Loan's assertion. Many conflated the notion of "distrust" with "hate". But one caller distinguished between the two, pointing out that, during the troubles, people who had security force members in their families exercised understandable caution about trusting others on the basis that careless talk could cost lives.
Was Nuala O'Loan unwise to make a statement on the basis of hearsay evidence which would not have stood up in one of her own inquiries? Did she just phrase her idea badly, in a one sided manner, or, as Ian Paisley Junior argues, is this another insight into what "the informed, educated Roman Catholic elite actually think"?
Perhaps Mrs O'Loan should have a chat with Liam Neeson who is asked in today's Independent about the furore he caused a few years ago when he told a US magazine that growing up as a Catholic in Ballymena made him feel like a "second class citizen". The film star tells the paper "that was a bit rash. The trouble with Northern Ireland is that you're cursed if you speak and you're cursed if you don't."
I'm 
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