One of a number of hi-jacked vehicles set on fire seen in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, Monday. Suspected IRA dissidents and their supporters hijacked cars in working-class Catholic parts of Northern Ireland in an apparently coordinated effort Monday to block roads and threaten police stations. Some of the vehicles were being set on fire in roads to disrupt traffic at rush hour, while others were abandoned near four Belfast police stations and on Northern Ireland's major motorway at the point where it passes Lurgan.

DUBLIN — Suspected IRA dissidents and their supporters hijacked cars Monday in working-class Catholic areas of Northern Ireland in a coordinated effort to block roads and threaten police stations, police said.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was receiving a wave of reports of vehicles being hijacked by masked gunmen in several parts of Belfast and in the Kilwilkie district of Lurgan, a power base for Irish Republican Army dissidents southwest of Belfast.

Some vehicles were being set on fire in roads to disrupt traffic at rush hour, while others were abandoned near four Belfast police stations and on Northern Ireland’s major motorway near Lurgan.

Police said they were treating all the abandoned vehicles as potential car bombs, although they cautioned this was unlikely. They urged motorists to avoid Kilwilkie and parts of Catholic west Belfast entirely.

Monday’s upheaval came at the end of a month in which IRA dissidents shot to death two soldiers and a policeman — the first killings of British security forces since 1998, the year of Northern Ireland’s peace accord.

Police said at least two cars were hijacked in Lurgan’s Kilwilkie district, the power base of suspected IRA dissident Colin Duffy. Duffy, 41, was charged last week with murdering the two soldiers.

One of the hijacked cars was abandoned on the M1 motorway, which connects Belfast to Dublin, 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the south. Authorities shut part of the motorway as a precaution.

One abandoned vehicle — which police said did not contain a bomb — was left near the Stormont Parliamentary Building, the center of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government between the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority.

The coalition’s Protestant leader, First Minister Peter Robinson, said the rising dissident IRA threat would not spur Protestants to sever links with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most Catholics today.

“The criminal terrorists responsible for the series of bomb scares and hijackings are beneath contempt and have no support whatsoever in the community,” Robinson said.

The hijackings and security alerts also coincided with a widespread breakdown of Belfast’s traffic lights system. Police in a statement called that an “unfortunate coincidence.”

A girl enjoys the atmosphere at the St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Tuesday. Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin emphasized that the island's 4 million Catholics must pray on St. Patrick's Day for an end to Irish Republican Army dissident attacks that claimed three lives this month in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

DUBLIN — Half a million Irish natives, immigrants and tourists jammed into Dublin’s city center Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a boisterous national holiday that has been darkened this year by recession and violence.

“To hell with the recession! Let’s dance!” shouted a leprechaun-dressed street entertainer in the vanguard of the parade. The 10-deep crowd roared with laughter at his lewd jig — and, for an earsplitting hour featuring bands from India to Indiana, forgot its troubles.

But Ireland faces its sternest challenges in decades. Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, the government is increasing taxes and cutting spending to combat the worst budget deficit in Europe, and people are worried by rising emigration and renewed bloodshed.

From their pulpits, cardinals and bishops said the island’s 4 million Catholics must reorder their priorities away from finances and toward family and community.

“Today I believe Patrick is calling the Irish to reconsider aspects of the culture and values upon which society has been built in recent years,” Cardinal Sean Brady said in his annual sermon honoring Ireland’s patron saint, who brought Christianity to the pagan Gaels in the 5th century.

“Like Patrick, can we not admit that we have been negligent in relegating God to the sidelines? Where is this preoccupation with personal wealth and success leading us? What has the breakup of family and community done to our happiness?” Brady asked.

He and other church leaders called for communities, in both the Irish Republic and the British territory of Northern Ireland, to isolate the gunmen who are spreading fear and dread. Irish Republican Army splinter groups killed three people this month in Northern Ireland and eight people have been gunned down in Dublin criminal feuds this year.

Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said both parts of Ireland should “send an urgent and unambiguous message that as one community, north and south, without distinction of belief or of political allegiance, we are united against anyone who takes the path of violence.”

But tensions in Northern Ireland forced authorities to cancel the parade in one town, Lurgan. Catholic youths in the town rioted over the weekend after the area’s alleged senior IRA dissident was arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers.

Politicians from the Irish Catholic community canceled the parade for fear that the youths might use it to provoke more conflict with police and Protestants.

And in Belfast, several hundred students living beside Queen’s University engaged in drunken street scuffles with police, who donned riot gear to protect themselves from barrages of beer bottles and other alcoholic drink containers.

The trouble — in a tree-lined district of student-rented housing — has been a perennial problem on St. Patrick’s Day. But these clashes involved far greater numbers of students and a greater level of destruction than in previous years, including broken trees, smashed windows, and vandalized telephone booths. Police blocked off both ends of one road after students ransacked a car and tried to set it on fire.

Dublin’s parade — the climax of a six-day festival featuring fireworks, street theater and children’s rides — was entirely peaceful as it attracted an exceptional range of foreigners who, for the day at least, branded themselves Irish.

Children of all colors and accents painted their faces the green, white and orange of the Irish flag, donned Viking horns and leprechaun hats, and pressed shamrock tattoos on their cheeks.

But Dublin Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byrne warned that, as the economy sours, the city of 1.3 million faces a growing risk of racist violence. Many natives resent the 200,000-plus Eastern Europeans, Asians and Africans who settled in Ireland during its Celtic Tiger boom of 1994-2007.

“It’s been a difficult — for some devastating — year. And now more than ever, we need to rebuild our communities and our sense of solidarity,” Byrne said.

The mayor said Ireland’s national holiday posed the question of “what it is to be Irish in the 21st century (and) how we blend our old and new cultures.”

A player of the Gaelic Athletic Association carries the figure of an Irish Wolfhound on his back during the annual St Patrick's Day Parade, as he walks through the streets of Dublin, Tuesday March 17, 2009. The two-hour spectacle will see street theatre troupes, artists, giant puppetry, dancers and marching bands from Ireland and further afield weave across the Irish capital.

———

On the Web

Catholic Church history on St. Patrick: www.catholicbishops.ie

St. Patrick’s Festival 2009: www.stpatricksfestival.ie

People from the four major church denominations, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist, turn out for a peace rally at Belfast's City Hall, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, March, 11, 2009. Labor union leaders called on workers across Northern Ireland to come together for a silent protest Wednesday against Irish Republican Army dissidents responsible for killing three people and wounding four others.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Several thousand Catholics and Protestants united in a silent protest Wednesday against the Irish Republican Army dissidents who have put Northern Ireland on edge — and its peace in doubt — with deadly attacks that have left three dead since the weekend.

More than 2,000 people gathered at lunchtime in front of Belfast City Hall to register their protest against Northern Ireland’s worst dissident IRA violence in a decade. Thousands more gathered in at least three other cities, including predominantly Catholic Londonderry and Newry, where dissidents have been active.

“No going back,” read placards at all the protests. As a lone bagpiper played a lament, the Belfast crowd — among them firefighters and postal workers, former paramilitary convicts and child-cradling mothers — fell stone-silent for five minutes.

Some openly wept while others shook hands and offered condolences to police officers over the latest fatality, a 23-year police veteran shot through the back of the head Monday.

Many said afterward they wished they could do more to ensure that Northern Ireland’s next generation never experiences what they endured through four decades of conflict that left 3,700 dead.

“I’m a Catholic. I grew up in an area where the police were the enemy. Now things have changed so completely for the better,” said Aidan Kane, a paramedic who came to the rally with his 6-year-old boy on his shoulders. “If my wee lad here wants to be a policeman when he grows up, I’d be proud. I shouldn’t have to worry that some nut might shoot him for serving his community.”

Patricia McKeown, president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, chief organizer of Wednesday’s protests, said she hoped the silence of the crowds would “be a silence that thunders around the world.”

“End this madness,” urged a front-page editorial in the Belfast Telegraph alongside photographs of the three slain men: 48-year-old police Constable Stephen Carroll and two soldiers in the British Army’s Royal Engineers: Cengiz “Patrick” Azimkar, 21, and Mark Quinsey, 23.

The Continuity IRA fatally shot Carroll as he sat in a patrol car Monday night. Another splinter group, the Real IRA, gunned down the two army engineers, and wounded two other soldiers and two pizza delivery men, on Saturday night as Afghanistan-bound troops collected a final meal at their base’s entrance.

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI said the dissident IRA violence could “seriously endanger the political process under way in Northern Ireland and risk extinguishing so many hopes raised by it in the region and in the entire world.”

“I pray to the Lord, so that no one allows themselves to be again won over by the horrendous temptation of violence,” the pope said.

The British Protestant and Irish Catholic leaders of Northern Ireland’s 22-month-old power-sharing government departed Wednesday for the U.S. to seek increased American support for the peace process.

Because of the killings, the leaders twice had canceled the start of their U.S. visit, which seeks to defend and promote U.S. business investment in their land of 1.7 million people.

As they left Wednesday, aides to First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness conceded that their trip now was likely to attract much greater U.S. attention — but for all the wrong reasons, amid worries that Northern Ireland could be sliding back into a conflict long kept at bay by the Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

But the recent killings have already had the effect of bonding Robinson, long a bitter Protestant opponent of the IRA, and McGuinness, a longtime IRA commander, more closely together than ever before. They rarely appeared in public together before Tuesday, when they stood shoulder to shoulder with Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde and appealed for citizens shielding the IRA dissidents in their communities to identify them to police.

“In Northern Ireland today we are seeing a degree of unity among the political parties that some people thought they would never see in their lifetimes,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Police raided homes Tuesday in a Catholic district of Craigavon, southwest of Belfast, near the spot where Carroll was killed, and arrested a 17-year-old boy and 37-year-old man on suspicion of involvement in the policeman’s murder. Both were being questioned Wednesday at the police’s main interrogation center in Antrim, the town west of Belfast where Saturday’s Real IRA attack took place.

Associated Press writers Frances D’Emilio in Rome and David Stringer in London contributed to this report.

People from the four major church denominations, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist, turn out for a peace rally at Belfast's City Hall, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, March, 11, 2009.

———

ON THE WEB

Belfast Telegraph appeal: tinyurl.com/ctpu4e

Police Service of Northern Ireland officers take up position near Lismore Manor, Craigavon, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, March, 10, 2009. A large security presence has begun after a Police Service of Northern Ireland officer was shot dead by suspected Irish Republican terrorists.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Catholic and Protestant leaders of Northern Ireland’s coalition government jointly pledged to crush Irish Republican Army dissidents in an exceptional show of unity Tuesday after the third killing in two days claimed by an IRA splinter group.

Police said they arrested two suspects — a 37-year-old and a 17-year-old — on suspicion of involvement in the latest slaying Monday night, when a policeman was shot through the back of the head as he sat in his patrol car. Both were arrested in a Catholic neighborhood near the scene of the slaying in Craigavon, southwest of Belfast.

Television news footage showed officers leading the teen to an armored van and putting a white hooded outfit on him to protect forensic evidence that may be on his clothes or skin.

The Continuity IRA said in a message to Belfast media it killed the officer — barely 48 hours after another splinter group, the Real IRA, gunned down two British soldiers and wounded four other people.

The sudden escalation in bloodshed appeared designed to undermine Northern Ireland’s young coalition as its leaders prepared to leave for a high-profile U.S. tour capped by their first meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

The leaders, First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, postponed that trip for the second time and appeared shoulder to shoulder at a press conference alongside Northern Ireland’s police commander, Chief Constable Hugh Orde.

McGuinness, a former IRA commander whose Sinn Fein party represents the Irish Catholic minority, decried the dissidents as “traitors to the island of Ireland.”

He called for supporters to break their traditional code of silence and pass tips to the police.

“I want to join with Peter to wholeheartedly appeal to everyone, and anyone, who has any information whatsoever about these killings, to pass that information to the police, north and south,” said McGuinness, who throughout the IRA’s 1970-97 campaign supported the killing of police. Until two years ago he withheld public statements of support for law-enforcement officials.

“We need to pledge our support to Hugh Orde,” McGuinness said as the Englishman stood beside him.

The Continuity IRA said in a message using a prearranged code word that it killed Constable Stephen Carroll, 48. The breakaway group threatened to keep targeting police “as long as there is British involvement in Ireland.”

Northern Ireland has suffered its first killings of British security forces since 1998 — the year that rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic politicians struck a peace deal designed to leave behind decades of bloodshed and promote a future based on cooperation and compromise.

“A good husband has been taken away from me and my life has been destroyed,” said Carroll’s wife, Kate.

For more than a decade IRA dissidents have been trying to mount attacks in hopes of reversing the results of ongoing political negotiations, which have delivered IRA disarmament in 2005, the rise of the Catholic-Protestant administration in May 2007 and the withdrawal of British troops from security duties two months later.

Analysts and anti-terrorist agencies say the Real IRA and Continuity IRA share identical aims and, despite their competitive rivalry, have cooperated in the past on planning and carrying out attacks.

But Orde said he believed they were operating independently at the moment — and could be motivated by a desire to outdo the other.

“I’m confident that we do not have some concerted effort by one group,” he said.

Orde said his officers were on their guard for dissident ambushes before Monday night’s attack, which looked like “a deliberate setup.”

He said police had received a call from a terrified woman who reported that a street gang had shattered her window.

He said the officers “stood off for a sensible period of time” to check for any signs of a trap. Then two carloads of police drove in to the area.

Carroll, a 23-year veteran, was sitting in the car providing cover to the other unit when he was shot in the head through the car’s rear window. A lone man was seen running away, police said.

Before Tuesday’s arrests, officers raided two homes in a Catholic district that overlooks the spot where the policeman was killed. Forensic specialists seized documents, clothing and other materials.

Orde said the killing of the policeman exhibited “a different style” than Saturday’s shooting outside the Massereene army base in Antrim, where the Real IRA opened fire on four off-duty, unarmed soldiers as they collected food from two Domino’s Pizza couriers. All six suffered multiple gunshot wounds. The four survivors remained in serious but stable condition Tuesday.

In its claim of responsibility, the Real IRA said it shot the pizza men — a 19-year-old Antrim man and a 32-year-old Polish immigrant — because they were “collaborating” with the enemy.

The old IRA killed nearly 1,800 people, mostly soldiers and police, before renouncing violence and disarming in 2005. It enjoyed strong support in the 1970s amid deep-seated Catholic grievances about economic disadvantage and discrimination. But decades of British reforms and effective Catholic campaigning have improved the fortunes of Northern Ireland’s Irish nationalist minority and reduced support for IRA dissidents.

Belfast commentator Brian Feeney said Catholics’ increasingly middle-class status and newfound political power mean “there are no nationalist grievances left to exploit.”

DUBLIN, Ireland – Dutch brewing giant Heineken NV announced Thursday it is closing one of Ireland’s oldest breweries, Beamish & Crawford in the city of Cork, just weeks after taking control of the operation.

Heineken said the brewery — best known for making Beamish, one of Ireland’s three brands of dark-brown stout — would close in March with the loss of 120 jobs, about three-fifths of the work force.

The rest would transfer to the Cork brewery that Heineken has owned since 1983 — and where it already makes Cork’s rival stout, Murphy’s.

Gerrit van Loo, managing director of Heineken Ireland, called it “the most difficult decision we have ever had to make.” He pledged that the Beamish brand would survive and be produced alongside Murphy’s, which can be a bit creamier and sweeter than the sharper-edged Beamish.

“Retaining two breweries is not sustainable and the loss of so many jobs remains a sad but unavoidable outcome,” he said.

Heineken gained control of the Beamish brewery only in October after a six-month investigation by Ireland’s Competition Authority ruled — to the disgust and disbelief of many Irishmen — that it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest for Heineken to produce both stouts.

Business and political leaders warned that the takeover would mean the death-knell of the 210-year-old brewery. Few expected the announcement so soon.

“It is vital that investment in the Beamish brands, particularly Beamish stout, continues and that the brand is developed to its full potential,” said Cork lawmaker Ciaran Lynch. “The worst possible outcome would be the loss not just of jobs, but of an internationally renowned brand which is of significant value to the economy.”

Another legislator, Deirdre Clune, called it “a dreadful day” for the brewery workers as well as Ireland’s heritage. She called on Heineken to spell out what it will do to the brewery, a Cork landmark beside the city’s medieval South Gate.

Both Cork brands have long struggled for market share against Ireland’s Goliath of stouts, Dublin-based Guinness, which is owned by British drinks company Diageo. Together the Cork stouts account for fewer than one in 10 pints of “the black stuff” sold in Ireland.

But the brewing industry in Ireland as a whole is feeling pressure from increased competition in Eastern Europe and Asia, and stout in particular is shunned by Ireland’s trendy young drinkers, who tend to favor lighter lagers and vodka-based drinks. Earlier this year Diageo announced it will close two of its four breweries and cut back operations at its 249-year-old Guinness brewery in Dublin, in favor of a future state-of-the-art brewery to be built on the capital’s outskirts.

Heineken won ownership of Beamish’s brands and brewery as part of a much larger joint takeover, with Danish brewers Carlsberg, of British brewers Scottish & Newcastle.

DUBLIN, Ireland – Ireland’s voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval, electoral officials said Friday.

In a major blow to the EU, 53.4 percent of Irish voters said no to the treaty. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen now will join other EU leaders at a summit next week to try to negotiate a new way forward.

Anti-treaty groups from the far left and right mobilized “no” voters by claiming that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its low business tax rates, its military neutrality and its ban on abortion.

“This is a very clear and loud voice that has been sent yet again by citizens of Europe rejecting the anti-democratic nature of Brussels governance,” said Declan Ganley, leader of Libertas, the most prominent anti-treaty campaign group in Ireland.

The euro common currency fell to a one-month low on the news.

An EU constitution failed after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005. Ireland was the only member that subjected its would-be successor, the Lisbon Treaty, to a national vote. The Irish constitution requires all EU treaties to be ratified by referendum.

Ireland’s minister for European affairs, Dick Roche, said the country was constitutionally barred from passing the treaty now. He predicted it would be difficult, if not impossible, for EU leaders to find a solution that would permit a second Irish referendum.

“As far as I’m concerned, this treaty is a dead letter,” Roche said, adding that Ireland’s voters have “made life very difficult for us going out to Brussels. We are in completely uncharted territory here, a very strange position.”

In the EU’s power base of Brussels and other European capitals, leaders vowed to complete ratification of the Lisbon Treaty through the governments of the other 26 members — even though, legally, the treaty cannot come into force because of the Irish rejection.

At the major ballot-counting center in Dublin, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan struggled to speak to reporters as anti-treaty activists jubilantly drowned him out with songs and chants of “No!” He eventually gave up and walked out, as one activist waved a sign reading “No to foreign rule” over his head.

Rural and working-class areas were almost universally anti-treaty. Better-off parts of Dublin registered stronger support for the EU. In suburban south Dublin, a largely wealthy and highly educated district, the “yes” camp triumphed with 63 percent of the vote. But a neighboring, scruffier district voted 65 percent “no.”

The Lisbon Treaty and the failed constitution before it sought to reshape EU powers and institutions in line with the bloc’s rapid growth in size and population since 2004.

Both documents proposed to strengthen the roles of the EU’s president and foreign policy chief, reduce the areas where individual nations could veto policy changes and increase the powers of the European Parliament to scrutinize EU laws.

Ireland views itself as a pro-EU state that has broadly benefited from 35 years of membership. Yet even here, a majority of voters appeared determined to register their opposition to the growth of a continental government that would erode Ireland’s sense of independence.

Anti-treaty pressure groups warned that the EU would use treaty powers to reduce Ireland’s ability to control its own tax rates and maintain a ban on abortion. Such claims were vociferously rejected by the government and major opposition parties, all of whom campaigned for the treaty’s ratification.

“People felt a convincing case for the treaty had not been made, and they felt hectored and bullied into supporting it while the wool was being pulled over their eyes,” said Richard Boyd Barrett, leader of a hard-left pressure group called People Before Profit.

In this 2006 file picture, Mines Advisory Group (MAG) Technical Field Manager Nick Guest inspects a Cluster Bomb Unit in the southern village of Ouazaiyeh, Lebanon. More than 100 nations reached agreement that would ban current designs of cluster bombs and require the destruction of stockpiles within eight years.

DUBLIN, Ireland – Diplomats from 111 nations formally adopted a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs on Friday after futile calls for participation by the weapons’ biggest makers and users, particularly the United States.

Twelve days of negotiations after diplomats from scores of nations delivered speeches embracing the accord. It requires signatories not to use cluster bombs, to destroy existing stockpiles within eight years, and to fund programs that clear old battlefields of dud bombs.

However, the talks did not involve the biggest makers and users of cluster bombs: the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. And the pact leaves the door open for new types that could pick targets more precisely and contain self-destruct technology.

Participants plan to sign the treaty in the Norwegian capital Oslo in December. It would go into effect in mid-2009.

Norwegian Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide, whose nation launched the negotiations in February 2007, said he was confident that the treaty would discourage the United States, Russia, China, Israel and other proponents of cluster bombs to use the weapons again.

“The reality is that states do care about not only the legality of their actions, but also the perceived legitimacy and appropriateness of their actions,” he said.

But Washington this week dismissed the prospect that the treaty would alter U.S. policy. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the United States remained committed to United Nations-sponsored talks that seek voluntary codes of “best practice” among leading makers of cluster bombs. These talks, also involving Russia and China, are not considering a ban.

Nonetheless, the treaty adopted Friday contains several concessions sought by the United States and its NATO allies, many of whom plan to sign the deal.

The pact would allow countries that sign the treaty to keep cooperating militarily with those that do not. Earlier drafts of the treaty sought to prohibit such cooperation, an idea fought by the United States and its NATO allies on the grounds this would make joint peacekeeping work difficult if not impossible.

Cluster bombs have been used in conflicts worldwide, from Vietnam to Iraq, to crush enemy forces by laying a carpet of dozens to hundreds of explosions with a single bomb, shell or rocket.

Their devastating impact on the battlefield often comes at a terrible cost to civilians afterward, including farmers who strike unexploded “bomblets” in their fields or children who mistake the objects for playthings.

————

———

ON THE WEB
Treaty text

DUBLIN – Guinness beer owner Diageo PLC rattled an Irish icon Friday, announcing plans to lay off more than half of its brewery workers, close two breweries and shift most production to a new, high-tech plant in the Dublin suburbs by 2013.

The British beverage maker decided not to close the landmark Guinness brewery, one of Dublin’s oldest businesses and a top tourist attraction, after concluding this would do too much damage to its brand image and customer sentiment.

Diageo expects to lay off about 250 people, or 58 percent of its current brewery work force in Ireland, over the next five years. Brewing staff at the Guinness brewery at St. James’ Gate in west Dublin will be slashed to 65 from 230.

Half of the riverside St. James’ Gate site will be sold for private development, and the volume of Guinness brewed there will be cut by about a third — to about 500 million pints annually. This will exclusively supply the Irish and British markets, where demand has slipped over the past decade in line with pubgoers’ diversifying tastes.

David Gosnell, Diageo’s managing director of global supply, said the move to a new suburban mega-brewery was necessary to compete with the rise of lower-cost breweries in Eastern Europe, Russia and China.

“The business is hugely competitive. … Smaller breweries are consolidating and closing in Western Europe,” Gosnell told a news conference inside Guinness’ panoramic Gravity Bar, which offered a 360-degree view of a mist-shrouded Dublin.

The new plant is expected to employ about 100 people, many of whom could come from the current Guinness brewery.

Two other breweries employing more than 170 in the towns of Dundalk, north of Dublin, and Kilkenny to the south would close by 2013. Few of those workers are expected to relocate. Those breweries produce many other beer brands, but not Guinness.

Gerry O’Hagan, supply director for Diageo in Ireland, said the current production capacity of the Dublin, Dundalk and Kilkenny breweries was less than 1.25 billion pint glasses of beer annually, while the new plant would be able to produce more than two-thirds of that on its own.

Diageo executives said they planned to spend 800 million euros ($1.25 billion) on the plan. Nearly three-quarters would go on building the new plant at an as-yet-undisclosed location, most of the rest on closing the two breweries and paying off staff.

Government and business leaders welcomed Diageo’s plans as a major new investment in Ireland. But union chiefs and opposition lawmakers said the company was greedy and taking Ireland’s drinking public for granted.

Deputy Prime Minister Mary Coughlan said Diageo was planning “a major investment that secures the future of brewing in Ireland.” She said the five-year scale would give workers facing layoffs plenty of time to retrain and look elsewhere.

“People were expecting change, but the actual announcement has shocked people,” said Sean Mackell, general secretary of the Guinness Workers Union. Diageo was “already making huge profits in Ireland,” he said, and vowed to extract maximum payoffs.

About 100 million euros ($150 million) has been earmarked to build a new brewhouse and refurbish other facilities at the St. James’ Gate brewery, where Anglo-Irish entrepreneur Arthur Guinness began brewing Ireland’s dark brown, creamy stout in 1759.

Brian Duffy, who travels the world promoting Guinness as its global “brand director,” said Arthur Guinness was a visionary but unsentimental businessman who negotiated a bargain 9,000-year lease on the St. James’ Gate site. He noted that Arthur Guinness had moved there from another location in search of better profits.

“I firmly believe if Arthur was here today, he would tell us to hurry up and get on with it, and would endorse it as the right thing to do,” Duffy said of Diageo’s plan.

Diageo said the project’s cost could be minimized by selling land at the Dundalk, Kilkenny and Dublin sites valued at an estimated 500 million euros ($775 million). Property prices in Ireland have soared over the past decade of Celtic Tiger boom, but have dropped this year in line with the global credit crisis.

Officials in the two towns losing breweries expressed shock at the news.

The Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk mainly produces Guinness’ sister beers — Harp lager and Smithwick ale — as well as continental European lagers under license, including Denmark’s Carlsberg and Germany’s Warsteiner.

The St. Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny produces Irish-brand ales and U.S. brand Budweiser for the Irish market, where lighter beers, ciders, wines and vodka-based drinks have made steady inroads versus Guinness over the past decade.

The new suburban Dublin brewery would take over the workload of both closing plants. It also would produce Guinness for continental European and global export, as well as the secret-recipe “essence” extract that Guinness ships to its nearly 50 breweries worldwide.

Diageo’s smallest beer-related facility in Ireland, in the city of Waterford, will continue to produce the “essence” extract. But supply director O’Hagan said staff there would be cut to 18 from 27.

Production of the company’s two world-recognized local spirits — Bailey’s Irish Cream and Bushmills Whiskey — will not be impacted by the brewery shakeup.

Diageo shares rose 1.3 percent to 1,041 pence ($20.27) on Friday in London.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – The hot favorite to become the new Protestant leader in Northern Ireland is Peter Robinson, who first gained international attention two decades ago by leading a mob attack on an Irish border village.

While he since has grown into one of Northern Ireland’s most polished and formidable politicians, many people wonder whether the likely successor to the charismatic Ian Paisley will be as willing – or able – to keep governing alongside Roman Catholics in the fledgling power-sharing administration for this British territory.

Robinson has been the 81-year-old Paisley’s savvy and steely deputy for three decades within the Democratic Unionist Party and is the finance minister in the 10-month-old government.

Several government insiders say they expect Robinson to be elected unchallenged as party leader and take over as the administration chief to replace the increasingly frail Paisley when he steps down from both posts in May.

Paisley founded the Democratic Unionists 37 years ago to swing a wrecking ball at compromise with Catholics, but the blunt-speaking evangelist transformed the party over the past three years into a champion of power-sharing.

It has never had another leader, and analysts agree Robinson stands no chance of marshaling the power of Paisley’s personality cult.

The big question is what that will mean for power-sharing, the central achievement of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday accord, the U.S.-brokered peace pact that will be 10 years old next month.

Robinson, not Paisley, has been the party’s dominant negotiator. He is widely credited with persuading Paisley to stay at the table – or at least empowering himself to take the lead while “Dr. No” took breaks from round-the-clock talks – during critical diplomatic junctures.

But some politicians fear that the changing of the guard will inevitably destabilize the administration because many Protestants oppose sharing power, and their alienation will flare once Paisley leaves the stage.

Britain and Ireland devised power-sharing as the best way to bring both sides’ extremists together in compromise and consign to history the 1968-98 conflict that left more than 3,700 dead. Both governments have credited the unique respect that Paisley enjoys among Protestant hard-liners as essential to last year’s breakthrough.

Robinson, 59, first grabbed widespread notice in 1986 when he led a mob that smashed up an Irish village and beat up two police officers.

Much like Paisley, Robinson flirted with anti-Catholic paramilitarism, served a prison sentence for inciting violence, and has mellowed over the past decade of peacemaking. Unlike his fiery-tonged mentor, Robinson displays none of Paisley’s warmth and humor alongside his new Catholic colleagues in government.

Many analysts say Robinson’s icy public demeanor masks a heart burning to exercise power, and that may be exactly what Protestant hard-liners need to make them feel comfortable again, because the skillful behind-the-scenes politician will avoid public chumminess with Catholics.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, however, is concerned about Democratic Unionist dissidents who were angered by Paisley’s U-turn on working with Catholics. He worries they will seize on the leadership change to push for an end to cooperation.

Adams, whose Catholic-backed party is an equal partner with the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland’s four-party administration, delivered a string of concessions to win Paisley’s trust.

The outlawed Irish Republican Army in 2005 disarmed and formally abandoned its aim of separating Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom by force. Sinn Fein then recognized the authority of the Northern Ireland police early in 2007, and two months later Paisley and Adams struck a deal at their first-ever meeting.

Adams noted the Democratic Unionists under Paisley were already resisting two key steps sought by Sinn Fein: spending millions to promote the Gaelic language and transferring the police and courts to local control. The British and Irish governments back both steps as part of the balancing act between British Protestant and Irish Catholic interests.

Sinn Fein wants Britain to give one of its government ministers control of the police and justice system. The Democratic Unionists – bitter at the idea an IRA veteran involved in killing police officers could end up overseeing them – have repeatedly rejected a target of May for that to happen.

The highest-profile Democratic Unionist to quit the party over power-sharing, Jim Allister, is building a new hard-line party, Traditional Unionist Voice, which argues against working with Sinn Fein while the IRA remains in existence, hibernating and capable of remobilizing.

In February, Allister’s party helped give the Democratic Unionists their first electoral setback after a decade of victories — a loss in a by-election for a vacant Northern Ireland Assembly seat.

Since then, the Democratic Unionists “have been in something of a blind panic, and changing the guard was their answer,” Allister said. “Of course it is not the personalities but the policies which need to change.”

Shawn Pogatchnik has covered Northern Ireland for The Associated Press since 1991.

DUBLIN, Ireland — Ireland’s national police force has arrested two men in connection with an audacious robbery last week on the landmark Guinness Brewery in Dublin — but said Thursday they were still looking others involved in the beer banditry.

The Garda Siochana police force declined to specify how many kegs have been recovered following the Nov. 29 raid, when a lone man drove a truck into the brewery, hitched up a trailer loaded with 450 kegs and drove straight out through the security gate into rush-hour traffic. Guinness called it the biggest robbery in the 248-year history of the brewery.

Police said they recovered an unspecified volume of the stolen beer Monday at an undisclosed location in County Meath, northwest of Dublin, and arrested two men Tuesday on suspicion of involvement with the theft.

Police said one man was charged Wednesday with possessing stolen property and received bail pending his arraignment in Kilmainham District Court, west Dublin, on Dec. 21 — an unusual delay that reflected detectives’ desire to keep looking for others involved in the robbery before showing their hand in court.

The other man was released Wednesday without charge. But police said he was suspected of lesser involvement in the robbery and a file of evidence was sent to the state prosecutors’ office, a common practice in Ireland.

The Garda Siochana said it would not release any details about the two men, their alleged involvement, the location of the recovered kegs or how much of the beer booty remained at large, saying it could make it harder to catch others involved in the raid.

Irish detectives sometimes put bailed suspects under surveillance in hopes that they might help police to identify others involved in a particular crime.

The stolen trailer was loaded up with 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of brand Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish brand Carlsberg. Guinness has a contract to brew and distribute those beers in Ireland.

Each keg holds about 88 British-sized pints, the most common serving size in Ireland — about 20 ounces each. The total theft involves 39,600 pints with a retail value exceeding $235,000.

The Republic of Ireland, a country of 4.2 million, has more than 10,000 pubs and bars. The Guinness brewery in Dublin is the biggest supplier, producing more than 5 million kegs annually.

More Weird News from the pages of the Tucson Citizen. Check the Oddities blog for other tales of No Redeeming Social Value.

Protestant bands parade through a loyalist part of east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday, July, 12, 2007. Thousands of orange order members and bands paraded across Northern Ireland to celebrate the 1690 Battle of the Boyne when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James.

Tens of thousands of Protestant hard-liners marched without trouble through Belfast and other Northern Ireland cities and towns Thursday in an annual event that used to involve conflict with Catholics but now shows the effects of a succeeding peace process.

The Orange Order marches each July 12 — an official holiday in Northern Ireland called simply “The Twelfth” — in commemoration of a 1690 victory by the forces of a Protestant king, William of Orange, over the Catholic he ousted from the English throne, James II. Catholics have long loathed the parades and said they were designed to intimidate them.

In the past decade, Catholics led by Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, tried to block Orangemen from parading through or near Catholic districts, frequently triggering riots with both Protestants and British security forces.

But that problem has faded away since 2005 as the IRA disarmed and renounced violence so that Sinn Fein could take part in a new power-sharing government with Protestant leaders.

In one sign of changed times, a small group of Orangemen passed Catholic protesters holding anti-Orange placards at Ardoyne, a traditional IRA power base in north Belfast. In 2005, that parade was attacked with Molotov cocktails and hand grenades at the same spot, leaving more than 100 wounded. But the two sides remained quiet and calm Thursday amid a light police presence.

A leading Sinn Fein official in Northern Ireland’s two-month-old government, former IRA car-bomber Gerry Kelly, oversaw the Catholic protest. One of the government’s leading Protestant members, Economy Minister Nigel Dodds, marched with the Orangemen.

An estimated 75,000 Orangemen accompanied by fife-and-drum units popularly known as “kick the pope” bands were parading through Belfast and 17 other cities and towns Thursday. But authorities forecast little or no trouble with Catholics — only heavy rains that forced some Orangemen to deploy umbrellas as they marched.

The Orange Order, a Protestant umbrella organization that played a pivotal role in creating Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom in 1921, has long opposed Britain’s direction of the peace process here, chiefly because it offered paroles of IRA prisoners and a share of power for Sinn Fein.

But the group’s major political resolution, being read at all 18 rallying points in the middle of Thursday’s parades, suggested that even Orangemen are coming to accept the reality of former IRA members in their government.

“The commitment of Sinn Fein-IRA to proper democratic government will be constantly monitored and the opportunity presented to them … is a test which they must not fail,” the resolution said.

But the group also accused the IRA of launching hundreds of arson attacks on Orange halls, including several damaged this year, and noted that Orangemen were frequently killed and maimed in IRA gun and bomb attacks.

“The Orange institution and its members need to hear a sincere and unequivocal apology from the (Irish) Republican Movement,” the Orange Order said, using the blanket term for Sinn Fein and the IRA.

A woman passes a mural for the Ulster Voluteer Force, an outlawed Northern Ireland group that for decades attacked the province's Catholic minority, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Protestant firebrand Ian Paisley and IRA veteran Martin McGuinness formed a long-unthinkable alliance Tuesday as Northern Ireland power-sharing went from dream to reality – and all sides expressed hope that bloodshed over this British territory would never return.

Paisley, who spent decades refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, conceded he had often refused to budge in years past but was ready now. He lauded the Irish Republican Army’s moves to renounce violence and disarm, and Sinn Fein’s decision to cooperate with the province’s mostly Protestant police as genuine.

“From the depths of my heart, I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in this province,” Paisley said.

Tuesday’s speedy, trouble-free formation of a 12-member administration jointly led by Paisley and McGuinness heralded an astonishing new era for Northern Ireland following decades of violence and political stalemate that left 3,700 dead.

Paisley, 81, affirmed an oath pledging to cooperate with Catholics and the government of the neighboring Republic of Ireland – moves that the fire-and-brimstone evangelist had long denounced as surrender.

Sinn Fein deputy leader McGuinness, 56, accepted the post of deputy first minister, which despite its title carries the same power as Paisley’s post of first minister.

As part of the same oath of office, McGuinness pledged to support the police and British courts – a position Sinn Fein refused for decades to accept.

Paisley’s Democratic Unionists took five Cabinet positions, Sinn Fein four, while the moderate Protestants of the Ulster Unionists received two and the moderate Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labour Party just one. Positions were allocated on the basis of each party’s strength in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Afterward, assembly members from all parties mingled with a jubilant crowd of dignitaries and well-wishers in the grand foyer of Stormont Parliamentary Building.

The Bush administration was represented by its newly appointed envoy for Northern Ireland affairs, State Department official Paul Dobriansky.

Much more attention was paid to two Kennedys: Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and his sister, former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith. She mingled in the crowd alongside Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams – whose international isolation ended in 1994 when she persuaded then-President Clinton to grant him a U.S. visa, defying British policy at the time.

“This is an extraordinary example that Northern Ireland is showing to the world, that you can disband militias and private armies, and put away the bomb and bullet,” the senator said, referring to the IRA’s 2005 decisions to renounce violence and disarm.

The audience was treated to exceptionally conciliatory speeches by Paisley and McGuinness as well as the British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, whose close cooperation since 1997 has underpinned the entire peace process.

McGuinness said they had “astounded the skeptics” and gestured to his new government partner, Paisley. “I want to wish you the best as we step forward into the greatest and most exciting challenge of our lives,” he said.

Blair, who is widely expected to announce his resignation from office later this week, said Ireland had suffered “centuries pockmarked by conflict, hardship and hatred.” He said Belfast power-sharing offered the chance “at last to escape those heavy chains of history.”

Blair and Ahern paid fulsome tribute to the leadership of Paisley and Sinn Fein – but particularly to each other.

“Bertie has always been there, willing to surmount another obstacle. … Bertie, thank you,” he said to Ahern, who is facing a tough May 24 election to remain in power.

Ahern said peace in Northern Ireland could not have been established without Blair’s hands-on involvement in coaxing the two sides together. He called Blair “a true friend of Ireland” and praised him for “the true determination that he had, for just sticking with it, for 10 tough years.”

The two premiers, Paisley and McGuinness then posed for photographs in the sunshine on a side staircase of Stormont. There were happy handshakes all around – except, in a dramatic illustration of their remaining distrust and discomfort, between Paisley and McGuinness, who avoided direct eye contact.

Earlier, McGuinness and Paisley sat down in separate armchairs at a small living room-style table in Paisley’s grand new ministerial office, while Blair and Ahern shared a crowded sofa with Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.

A live television feed beamed the first few, largely awkward minutes of their conversation, which was dominated by Paisley. McGuinness did not manage an audible peep.

Paisley, referring to Blair’s imminent departure from Downing Street, noted to laughter all around: “As you’re going out as a young man, I’m coming in as a granddad!”

Blair spoke, but largely as the straight man to Paisley’s quips. When Blair noted how friendly Northern Ireland people were as individuals, so at odds with their bitter politics, Paisley shot back: “I wonder why people hate me, because I’m such a nice man!”

Deputy leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein Martin McGuinness, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party Ian Paisley, in the First Minister's office at Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast, Northerland Ireland Tuesday May 8, 2007. Protestant leader Ian Paisley, who spent decades refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, was elected Tuesday to oversee a power-sharing administration alongside his longtime Sinn Fein foes.

Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, right, attends funeral service for the Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine, with sons of the politician Mark, left and Owen at centre, in East Belfast, Northern Ireland, Friday, Jan. 12, 2007. The PUP leader which is the political wing of the outlawed pro British terror group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) died suddenly ages 53. Politicians from across the religious divide attended the funeral.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Leaders from all sides of Northern Ireland’s conflict united Friday at the funeral of David Ervine, a one-time Protestant extremist who became a leading voice for reason and compromise.

Ervine, who died Monday at age 53 after suffering a heart attack and brain hemorrhage, persuaded his outlawed Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF, to declare a cease-fire and pursue politics.

While Ervine’s legal Progressive Unionist Party won few votes, he became exceptionally popular because of his rare ability to communicate both to his British Protestant base and across the divide to the province’s Irish Catholic minority.

His funeral inside a packed Methodist church attracted an unprecedented array of mourners for Belfast – a city where high walls of brick, steel and barbed wire still divide rival communities, and Protestants and Catholics usually are buried in different cemeteries.

“Who else could have attracted such a breadth of attendance as David has today?” Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain told the mourners. “He earned huge respect because he knew that you couldn’t rewrite history – and he didn’t try. He knew you could shape the future, and in that he played an absolutely central role.”

Sharing pews were delegations from the British and Irish governments, led by Hain and Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern; Protestant paramilitary commanders and Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde; and the leaders of several other political parties long stung by Ervine’s frequent barbs at their inflexibility.

Most remarkably, the guest list included Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, whose Irish Republican Army-linked party represents most Catholics – and who was shot and wounded a decade before the Protestant side’s cease-fire.

Adams embraced Ervine’s widow, Jeanette, on the church steps.

Adams, a reputed IRA commander for three decades, said he “obviously had concerns about security” but felt he needed to stress his sympathies to Protestant paramilitary circles “at a time when they have lost their most articulate leader.”

In his eulogy, Ervine’s brother Brian said he was pleased to see “so many people that, 10 years ago, we would have classed as our traditional enemies.” The audience applauded.

Adams sat directly behind Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists, the major Protestant-backed party. The two did not speak.

Nonetheless, speaker after speaker noted what a broad church it was Friday.

Outside, thousands lined Newtownards Road, the major thoroughfare of Protestant east Belfast, where the ceremony was broadcast on loudspeakers. Some clapped, others shouted their goodbyes, as Ervine’s coffin passed by.

But in a sign of the hatreds and fears that still bedevil Northern Ireland, UVF veterans told camera crews not to film their faces as they helped carry the casket down the road.

As a member of the outlawed UVF in the 1970s, Ervine was committed to killing Catholics in retaliation for IRA attacks on his own community. He was caught in 1974 trying to drive a car bomb into Catholic west Belfast and spent six years in prison.

Like many of Sinn Fein’s future leaders, prison gave Ervine education and political sophistication. In 1994, while still a reputed UVF commander, Ervine helped to deliver a cease-fire by the UVF and another outlawed Protestant group, the Ulster Defense Association or UDA.

Ervine led his fledgling party into 22 months of negotiations that produced the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. But power-sharing collapsed in 2002 amid chronic conflicts between Protestant leaders and Sinn Fein.

Unlike Sinn Fein leaders with an IRA past, Ervine was open about his violent youth – and denounced his side’s anti-Catholic bloodshed as both morally wrong and politically disastrous.

“He wanted to repent and make it right,” said the Rev. Gary Mason, the Methodist minister who oversaw the funeral service. “If only more of our leaders could be so honest.”

A 2004 photo of Northern Ireland's Progressive Unionist leader David Ervine. Ervine, a one-time Protestant terrorist who became one of Northern Ireland's most articulate and forward-thinking politicians, died Monday Jan. 8, 2007 after suffering a heart attack.