The DUP is using the Northern Ireland protocol as “cover” not to re-enter the North’s power-sharing institutions, the Sinn Féin vice-president and the North’s first minister designate has told the party’s ardfheis.
“And you also know that the real reason is because as an Irish nationalist, I will be at the helm as first minister, and everybody knows it,” Ms O’Neill said.
Speaking to reporters as the ardfheis began, she said the “real reason” for the DUP’s boycott of the Northern institutions is that the party “do not want to serve as a deputy first minister to a Sinn Féin first minister” and this was a “very common thing that’s said to me regularly by people on the street.”
This has been rejected by the DUP, which has refused to go back into government at Stormont until issues around the Northern Ireland protocol – which it opposes – are resolved to its satisfaction.
DUP Assembly member Diane Dodds said on Saturday her party had “made clear there was no basis for government last February when we were the largest party”.
“Unlike Sinn Féin we have always respected the ballot box and the rule of law,” she said.
“The DUP accepts the last election result but rejects the NI protocol that Sinn Féin wants rigorously implemented,” she said.
Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris is due to make a statement in the Commons next week to “lay out my next steps” after he ruled out a pre-Christmas election.
Current legislation requires an election by January 19th, but there is speculation the law could be changed to extend this to allow time for negotiations between the EU and the United Kingdom on the Northern Ireland protocol to take place. This is understood to be the Irish Government’s preferred option.
The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said on Friday “ideally space should be provided to enable those talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom to develop and hopefully produce a negotiated outcome.”
On Saturday, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said the UK government needed to “set out exactly what the plan is.
“We need a very clear and firm indication from Downing Street that there will be good-faith negotiations with Europe and that in fact we will have a conclusion to those negotiations – no more unilateral action,” she said, adding this should be followed by the restoration of the Assembly and Executive,” Ms McDonald said.
“The British government have set out what they won’t do; what we now need to know is what they are preparing to do. What’s the plan? There has to be a plan there,” she said.
Ms O’Neill said the UK government had “yet to set out what is the next step” and her demand was “a very clear statement from the British government that actually says what they’re going to do next.
“So that needs to be: if they’re going to extend the time to call an election, the purpose needs to be to find an agreed way forward to make the protocol work.
“All those talks need to now continue in earnest, we need to actually find an agreed way forward, Westminster needs to step up to the plate and actually find a way to make the protocol work,” Ms O’Neill said.
“Then the public then can have an Executive that actually helps them through the cost of living crisis,” she said.
This was emphasised by Ms O’Neill in her speech to the ardfheis, saying her “clear call today is for London and Brussels to propel the protocol talks and for Downing Street to demonstrate the political will to get a resolution”.
Ms McDonald reiterated her party’s call for joint authority in the event of a lengthy suspension of the Northern institutions, saying that “in circumstances where the DUP are not prepared to work power sharing” the alternative was a “partnership arrangement between Dublin and London”.
This has been ruled out by the UK government, which said it was “not being considered”.
In her speech to the ardfheis Ms O’Neill said the Northern Secretary had left people in “limbo with his indecision and his dithering” and repeated the call for him to “step out a definitive pathway be restore an Executive instead of fueling instability and uncertainty”.
Ms O’Neill also warned the political vacuum could not be “filled by threats of violence or intimidation from loyalists” and sent “solidarity” to the actor James Nesbitt and Queen’s University professor Colin Harvey, saying “attacking them is an attack on democracy and us all”.
Ms O’Neill told the ardfheis of her commitment to reaching out the “hand of friendship to advance reconciliation” which she said “is always going to be our common ground where together, we can all build for the future and do so, in a way that reflects the diversity of our different but equally legitimate, allegiances, identities and aspirations”.
This, she said, was why she had attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth in September.
“I was being respectful to all of those of a British and unionist tradition from across our society who felt her loss dearly,” she said.
“I am working to build a society not of orange and green, but a rainbow of colours and multi-culturalism which reflects who we are and what we stand for today.”
