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James McCarthy

James McCarthy

Former footballer

Oct 13, 2026

2:17
We have simply been managing division and sectarianism in this society, rather than doing the hard yards of breaking it down and overcoming it once and for all."
2:29
Well, relations within the executive, particularly between the First and Deputy First Minister, have soured in recent months.
2:35
This goes way back to the start of the year, when we had another vote of no confidence in the Education Minister, whenever he had traveled to Israel and, and visited a school in the occupied territories.
2:46
Now, at the time, the First Minister had supported that vote of no confidence, and that really began to sour relations between the DUP and Sinn Féin.
2:55
And since then, there's been a number of issues that has really led to [sighs] a real souring of relations between those two at the top of the executive.
3:06
Which is somewhat ironic, given Michelle O'Neill's original commitment to be a First Minister for everybody.
3:12
To be honest with you, Michelle O'Neill has, h- has been trying her best in the office.
3:18
The Sinn Féin have a number of bills that are trying to make their way through the executive, and they are being blocked from getting onto the executive table by the DUP.
2:17
So what happened then last night?
2:20
So last night, we obviously seen calls on social media for protests at numerous locations across Northern Ireland and across in GB as well.
2:29
Um, those protests inevitably did turn violent.
2:33
We seen bins set on fire and placed against a hijacked bus in East Belfast.
2:40
That then spread to various pockets a- across the city and indeed, um, other locations across Northern Ireland.
2:46
We've seen a Turkish barber targeted in Ballyclaire, and we also saw a takeaway and a police car targeted in Portadown as well.
3:01
N- is the view that the PSNI were sufficiently out in force to prevent the kind of incidents we saw?
3:07
Well, we know obviously Chief Constable John Boucher has been saying for some time that the Police Service of Northern Ireland are under-resourced, but they were on the ground, and they dealt with this to the best of their ability.
17:18
Good for you.
17:18
But yeah, the story.
17:19
Yeah.
17:19
We have this collection of antique terracotta, um, the Molina Antique Terracotta.
17:23
We were s- or we still are super passionate about this collection.
17:28
It was one of the first things that we launched.
17:29
We, we basically found these two brothers in Serbia who go out and collect these old roof tiles and repurpose them.

15 MINS LATER

32:30
Do you need to then store products if they're not available yet? H- how do you manage all of that end of it?
1:35
Now, remind us of the significance of Geoffrey Donaldson as a figure in unionist politics in Northern Ireland and why, when these charges were originally brought, it was so shocking.
1:45
Jeffrey Donaldson has been a mainstay of political unionism for many, many years.
1:50
He was the MP for Lagan Valley since 1997 until 2024.
1:56
And he was the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party for three years prior to his arrest.
2:02
Now, going back to the time of the Good Friday Agreement, when he was a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, he was part of that negotiating team.
2:10
And then he subsequently quit the Ulster Unionist Party and joined the DUP in response to there not being any links between Sinn Féin's admittance to government and IRA decommissioning at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.
2:22
So he has been around for many, many decades.
2:36
He hasn't taken much opportunity to do that publicly since the charges were laid down.

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