New York, New York

Having travelled across the Atlantic to get to last week's announcement of the $150 million dollar New York contribution to the Emerald Fund, the pressure of deadlines meant I couldn't hang around long enough to ask the City Comptroller William C. Thompson any questions about how the funding might work in practice.

Instead I had to jump on to the Metro (the traffic congestion rendered a taxi impossible) then sprint four blocks to get Mr Thompson's words on the air for BBC Newsline 1830.

As I ran towards the BBC New York bureau, the Evening Extra presenter Karen Patterson cross questioned me about the announcement. If I sounded more incoherent than usual, I can only plead that I was trying to traverse a Manhattan Avenue at the time.

I only mention this now because tonight Karen got an interview with the Comptroller. She asked him about his commitment to the MacBride principles on job discrimination. Replying, the Comptroller appeared to indicate that anyone hoping to benefit from the Emerald Fund would have to sign up to the 9 principles.

That prompted a trenchant response from the Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader Danny Kennedy, who accused the Comptroller of being ignorant about the realities of Northern Ireland. He also questioned why the First Minister had gone along with the announcement if there were strings attached.

During the troubles, the MacBride principles were a bug bear for unionists and British ministers. But these days younger unionists are likely to be unaware of their existence. And when you look at the principles they don't seem too far away from current equality legislation.

My guess is that any difficulty on this score will be finessed away before the Comptroller, the New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a host of other city officials arrive here for next month's investment conference.

William Thompson is a potential contender for Mayor Bloomberg's job when the next New York mayoral election takes place in November 2009. He isn't the only US candidate who has been talking about funding Ireland in recent days - I see that, addressing an Irish Presidential Forum in New York, Hillary Clinton floated the idea of "Irish bonds" echoing the "Israel bonds" which Jerusalem has been selling in the USA for more than 50 years "Irish Bonds".

On a separate note, I hope you all find the new comments system easy enough to cope with. It requires registration, but our blog boffins say that, once registered, it will make the process of leaving comments much smoother.

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