Northern Ireland loves Neal

By Farah Stockman
Globe Staff

Shaun Woodward, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, met today with Congressman Richard E. Neal to thank him for helping to nudge the peace process in Northern Ireland along into its final stages.

"He has been absolutely crucial to helping build the process but also in bringing investments, which show the public that the process is working," Woodward said of Neal, who is chairman of the Friends of Ireland in Congress. "American investment has created 1,000 new, high-paying jobs in Northern Ireland since September."

But Woodward said there is still work to do to implement the final pieces of the Good Friday Agreement: the devolution of police powers and the justice system to Northern Ireland's power-sharing government.

Delays implementing the final stage of the peace agreement run the risk of bolstering the few radical groups that remain opposed to the peace treaty. Since March, two British soldiers and a policeman have been shot, and a number of attempted bombings have been perpetrated by a fringe splinter group of former members of the Irish Republican Army.

Today, Woodward noted a rise in the number of people joining these fringe militant groups.

"In the last couple of years, you have seen the number of individuals growing," he said. "Good community policing, coupled with good intelligence, has meant that we are able to keep on top of these criminals. . . That isn't to say that if the politics were seen to stall, that you wouldn't see an increase of people wanting to join these organizations, however deluded that they may be."

But he said that militants are no longer getting any support from Americans who once supported the IRA.

"For the tiny number of people who kept up a romantic association, it all ended with 9-11," he said. "I don't think the dissidents will get much traction here."