Mr Major was said to have promised that British ministers would “take the Irish side through any House of Commons statement” before it was made.Dublin said this was not done and that Mr Major’s statement was faxed to the Irish government only about 30 minutes before he delivered it in the Commons.Any attempt to persuade Mr Major to change his mind looks unlikely to succeed. But even if such fears are exaggerated, it is clear that Anglo-Irish relations have been badly bruised.Contradicting London’s claim that the Irish had been properly informed of Wednesday’s announcement, Irish government sources said that on Tuesday night the taoiseach, John Bruton, had told Mr Major “that an election would not be the way to start all-party talks”. But the nationalists are already lobbying Washington and Irish-American figures to put pressure on Mr Major to drop the election plan.The nationalist fear is that the election move represents a complete realignment of British policy towards a more unionist-oriented approach. He declared: “He has done the dirty on the Irish government in a very public and humiliating way, and he is well on the way to breaking faith and being at odds with the entire nationalist community in the north of Ireland.”There will be a meeting between Mr Major and Mr Hume on Tuesday, followed by another on Thursday between the Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, and Irish foreign minister Dick Spring.

The row, which led to Mr Hume walking out of a private meeting, not only poses a risk to the close relationship between the two parties but also threatens to raise tensions within the Labour Party over policy towards Northern Ireland. Several leading MPs have close links with nationalists.The meeting was later described by one source as a “robust” discussion rather than a “rupture” in relations. One of Mr Blair’s allies said the bi-partisan approach will prevail, providing there is “no clear act of breach of good faith”.Although Mr Hume’s deputy, Seamus Mallon, stayed behind at the meeting, his own anger about the peace process became evident yesterday. The dispute comes as nationalist Ireland prepares to launch a sustained political and diplomatic offensive aimed at changing John Major’s mind about making an election the centrepiece of the Irish peace process.
Mr Hume clashed with Mr Blair last week over the Labour leader’s backing for the Government’s stand on the Irish peace process.

Much of his best fiction arose from the pain of that early double-orphaning. In his writing about his own death, he showed the world extraordinary courage.. LABOUR’s support for the Government over the Northern Ireland peace process is under strain, following a row between opposition leader Tony Blair and John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. He faced the knowledge of his own demise with good sense: “I don’t think the death sentence bothers me I don’t see why it should more than before. I have had little trouble living with the death warrant aspect of life until now.”Brodkey’s childhood had been blighted by the death of his mother when he was only two and the deaths, only a few years later, of the distant cousins who became his surrogate parents. One American critic is reported to have said that “death would have been a smarter career move”.It’s unlikely that even the cruellest critic would have made that remark two years later, when Brodkey announced that he had Aids.

“Consumers will feel the benefit, particularly as the winter bills are heaviest, and we calculate that this rebate represents about 40 per cent of an average family’s bill.”The electricty companies argue that discounting future electricity bills is the fairest and most efficient way to benefit their consumers. The payments, some of which have already been credited to customers’ accounts, will be completed by the end of March.The Department of Trade and Industry, which co-ordinated the payout, says that the electricity companies were left to decide the method and mechanism of payment.However, Yvonne Constance of the chairman’s group of the Electricity Consumers’ Committees, who helped negotiate the deal, said: “Tim Eggar, the Energy Minister, was keen for the money to be used to reduce energy bills. I don’t believe he instructed the companies, but they appear to have taken their lead from him.”The payment is not as big as we would have liked, but overall we feel that this was a fair rebate or payback on money already spent and invested by consumers. I understand that the method of discounting bills was settled on because it was marginally cheaper to administer.”A spokesman for the Electricity Association, a trade body representing the 12 regional companies, hinted that the choice of discount rather than cash would be beneficial to the companies’ tax position. “The money being paid now is a discount in the form of a credit against the future use of electricity and is in no way a rebate of past payment,” he said.”We are paying the discount in this way because we have been advised that to pay cheques to individual customers would attract an additional tax liability for each of the companies. If we did this we would have to deduct the tax from the sum available to pay and the customers would be worse off.”Some customers, such as those in the East Midlands and Norweb regions who use meters to pre-pay their electricity, will be given money rather than discounts.