Mrs Robinson scuppers peace process

For the fifth day running, Northern Ireland picks over the implications of the Iris Robinson sex scandal. Last week it was revealed that Mrs Robinson, 60 year old wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson, had tried to commit suicide after admitting to an affair with a 19 year old Catholic. A Westminster MP and member of Northern Ireland’s assembly at Stormont, Mrs Robinson used her political influence to secure for her lover a €55,000 loan to set up his own business. On a weekend after which she was expelled from the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), the Belfast Telegraph reports that she is currently receiving “acute psychiatric treatment”.

The scandal has not only brought down her husband Peter, who resigned "temporarily" this afternoon, but also risks derailing the Northern Ireland peace process, reports the Irish Times in Dublin. Both British and Irish governments “are maintaining high-level contacts to ensure the personal and political crisis affecting the Robinson family and the DUP does not collapse the Stormont powersharing administration,” the Dublin daily reveals. According to the terms of the Good Friday peace agreement, Unionists and Nationalists jointly govern Northern Ireland. However, DUP and nationalist party Sinn Féin have been deadlocked in wranglings over the future of policing and justice in the province.