THE DUP has blocked the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing by UUP health minister Mike Nesbitt, claiming that evidence for its effectiveness is inconclusive.

This is curious nit-picking from a party that once damned the Devil’s buttermilk.

Former DUP health minister Jim Wells has said that when he tried to introduce the same policy a decade ago, he encountered resistance within his party due to lobbying from the drinks industry and concern about the reaction in “loyalist, working-class communities”.

This may not be an isolated phenomenon.

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Gambling in Northern Ireland is regulated by the DUP-controlled Department for Communities, which might be expected to take a dim view of casting pearls before swine. The party says it wants to align with recent gambling reforms in Britain.

Yet so far it has only copied over the reforms the industry likes, such as higher stakes and prizes, but not the reforms it does not like, such as an independent regulator and a gambling levy.

What are the odds of that?

John Manley: DUP opposition to minimum unit pricing for alcohol doesn’t stack upOpens in new window

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After 12 months of consultation and deliberation on how developers might help fund the water system, Sinn Féin infrastructure minister Liz Kimmins has announced they can make voluntary contributions.

This hardly differs from long-standing practice, so what has all the deliberation been about?

In April 2024, two months after devolution was restored, the then Sinn Féin infrastructure minister, John O’Dowd, proposed mandatory developer contributions as an alternative to water charging.

By September he was clarifying this would only be a “small part” of the solution, although he added serious work on it was underway.

This was contradicted in February 2025 by NI Water, which said there had been no “substantive........

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