A DÁIL Bill on preparing for a united Ireland must have seemed like a win-win for Sinn Féin.

The government parties would either be embarrassed into supporting it, in which case Sinn Féin would be setting the agenda, or they would be embarrassingly forced into opposing it, in which case Sinn Féin could say only it was truly committed to a united Ireland.

But the government parties were always most likely to oppose the Bill, as happened on Wednesday, causing it to fall.

So Sinn Féin’s high-profile promotion of the Bill across Ireland over the past few weeks was a misjudgment.

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Setting so much store by an obviously doomed proposal made the party look ridiculous, while giving the government parties an opportunity to explain and defend their more cautious approach.

Sinn Féin’s opponents are now accusing it of a mounting a desperate distraction.

A hint of what it might be trying to distract people from came in one of its promotional videos for the Bill, where Mary Lou McDonald asked people on the street to write down what a united Ireland meant to them.

One person was shown writing “control our own borders” before the camera cut away.

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Alliance has introduced a Bill to ban so-called gay conversion therapy.

The DUP, which opposes a ban, will struggle to stay on any moral high horse after the Jeffrey Donaldson scandal, but this is also a dangerous test for the human rights and equality commissions.

Both strongly support a ban, saying conversion practices are harmful, discriminatory and breach the right to freedom from degrading treatment – an absolute right, overriding most others.

Nevertheless, restricting what are in effect private conversations, often in a religious setting, would breach fundamental rights to free association, free expression and freedom of belief.

Commissioners........

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