Sinn Fein's Barry McElduff wants to know what progress has been made on updating a study of obstacles to cross border mobility. He told a Stormont Committee that he had been contacted by a constituent who had just moved a couple of miles across the border from Strabane to Lifford. She asked the post office in Strabane to redirect her mail. When the mail arrived, including the woman's daughter's A level results, it was a week late and stamped "par avion". It's not clear which route it had taken but when I last checked Aer Lingus's renewed interest in Northern Ireland did not include a regular Strabane Lifford shuttle.
You might presume that all the officials in the Department of Finance and Personnel are number crunchers but some of them have to wrestle with problems which require more than a pocket calculator to resolve.
Today DFP officials briefed the Finance Committee on the Presumption of Death Bill, which is at an advanced stage of drafting. The bill follows representations from the families of those who disappeared during the troubles who have not been able to get death certificates for their loved ones leaving them in a state of legal limbo.
Following the precedent of a 30 year old Scottish law the officials are now preparing a bill which will not just provide the families of the disappeared with some solace but should also apply to cases of other missing people in the future.
In cases where there is compelling evidence to suggest someone has died, or the missing person has not been heard from for seven years, family members will be able to ask a court to declare the person to be presumed dead.
But what if someone comes back from the dead? The officials told the committee that in Scotland, where four or five declarations are made each year, that has only happened once in thirty years.
There are a few potential dilemmas. What happens if one family member wants someone declared dead but others are clinging on to the hope that they will return? And what happens to the property which has been passed on to your nearest and dearest if you resurface?
As things stand it's proposed the missing person will forfeit their estate if they don't reappear within five years of being declared dead. But then if you have just achieved resurrection it may be that you won't be too worried about what happened to your old record collection.
I finished work last night with a rushed edit of the Assembly debate on the Giants Causeway Visitor Centre so wasn't able to gather my thoughts on the matter for this blog. Now, a day later, the affair is still rumbling along, with Coleraine Council's opposition to the proposed private development. Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds have firmly rejected criticism of their decisions, and the private developer Seymour Sweeney says he has never met either minister, even though he clearly knows the DUP leader Ian Paisley and his son Ian Paisley Junior.
Mr Sweeney says he has never been a DUP donor, although he is a party member. In the rest of the UK this would be a matter of public record as political donations are declared to the Electoral Commission. Here parties will have to declare donations from the autumn of this year. But the Commission will not be allowed to publicise donors' names at least until 2010. This was at the request of some parties who were concerned that identifying their donors might place individuals in danger or discourage potential supporters.
However the fact that ministers from the local parties are now making decisions with major commercial implications puts this continuing lack of transparency in a different context to the days of direct rule when the legislation on party funding was initially drafted. Back In June 2006, at a hearing of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I argued that it would be logical for the timetable for the public disclosure of political donations to be dovetailed with the return of devolution. I think recent events have strengthened that argument.
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