Public patience with political deadlock at Stormont wearing ‘very thin’, McDonald says

The public’s patience with the continued absence of Northern Ireland’s political institutions has “worn very, very thin” and there must be no further delay to the restoration of Stormont, the Sinn Féin leader has said.

Speaking on the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster on Monday, Mary Lou McDonald said this was in “everybody’s interests” and the “idea that there are memos circulating suggesting that there can be further foot-dragging, I think, is very concerning.”

In an internal memo sent to DUP members at the weekend, and published in Monday’s Belfast Telegraph, Jeffrey Donaldson said his party was not “fixated with timelines” and would not be “calendar-led” in its talks with the UK government over the post-Brexit Windsor Framework. The DUP is seeking further assurances from London over Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.

In the memo, Mr Donaldson reiterated the DUP’s position, defended the decision to collapse the institutions and said the party was “single-mindedly focused on our aims and objectives” and “determined to secure further progress”.

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There has been increasing speculation that the DUP is preparing to strike a deal which would see it return to Stormont, more than 18 months after it collapsed the power-sharing institutions in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements.

The potential window for such a deal is narrowing, with London expected to be increasingly preoccupied with a general election campaign on top of a busy domestic agenda. Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said talks are in their “final phase”.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has spoken previously of the need for a “Plan B” if there is a continued stalemate, though in recent weeks he has struck a more upbeat note, saying there was a “real possibility” Stormont could be back up and running by Christmas or in the New Year.

Ms McDonald on Monday said she had a “very strong sense that public patience has been long, but it has now worn very, very thin”.

“There is a timetable, there is an urgency about this, I hope, and I am hopeful that the DUP will do the right thing that we will have now a speedy return of the institutions,” she said, adding there was a need for “progress now”.

“Let’s see positivity, a front-footed approach from all of us, and that means the DUP now shaping up, bringing pace to matters, and getting back round the table with everybody else and getting the job done.”

Former DUP leader Peter Robinson last week said unionists needed to realise they would not get everything they wanted from the ongoing negotiations.

“There’s a stage where unionists have to recognise that we really have pushed this one, we have got a good deal – not everything that we wanted, but the rest that we do want,” he said. “I think we’re in a position to argue for it and to achieve it using the Assembly as our base for doing it.”

Asked if he thought a deal was imminent, he said there was “still a gap” and there were “further steps the [UK] government can take and I hope they do”.