News

October 30, 2017

Deadline nears for Northern Ireland power-sharing deal, direct rule looms

Deadline nears for Northern Ireland power-sharing deal, direct rule looms

Demonstrators march onto College Green outside The Houses of Parliament at an anti-Brexit protest in central London on June 28, 2016. EU leaders attempted to rescue the European project and Prime Minister David Cameron sought to calm fears over Britain’s vote to leave the bloc as ratings agencies downgraded the country. Britain has been pitched into uncertainty by the June 23 referendum result, with Cameron announcing his resignation, the economy facing a string of shocks and Scotland making a fresh threat to break away. / AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS

Britain will bring in legislation to set a budget for Northern Ireland if no last-minute deal can be struck on Monday to restore a power-sharing government in the province 10 months after it collapsed.

Northern Ireland has been without a regional administration since January, raising the prospect of direct rule being reimposed from London, potentially destabilizing a delicate political balance in the British province.

Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, said this month talks had stalled with the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) over the rights of Irish language speakers.

Sinn Fein regional assembly member Conor Murphy said a deal could be done but that the DUP had to make concessions.

“A deal in the political talks needs to be a deal for all in our society and not just for the political leaderships of unionism,” he said in a statement on Monday. “If the political institutions are to be sustainable then they must be restored on the basis of equality, rights and respect.”

If a agreement is reached before Monday’s deadline, Brokenshire will return to London to begin the processes required to form a new Northern Ireland Executive, a British government spokesman said last week.

However, if a budget is imposed by London, it would be the closest Northern Ireland has come to a return to direct rule in a decade.

The DUP and Sinn Fein shared power in the previous devolved coalition administration under a system created following a 1998 peace deal which ended three decades of violence in the province.