Closure of Britain's Monitoring Commission welcomed

THE so-called Independent Monitoring Commission is to be shut down after six years. Sinn Féin Assembly member John O’Dowd said that the decision to do away with the unnecessary and expensive quango was long overdue.

The IMC should never have been formed in the first place. It was an expensive and unnecessary safety blanket for unionism and a tool of the British security services to allow them to influence the political process.

We can only speculate on the amount of public money wasted in the vast expenses claims racked up by the hand-picked mandarins who operated the IMC.

The IMC was no part of the Good Friday Agreement apparatus and its removal from the political process is a welcome move.