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The DUP “can’t hold everybody else to ransom” and there is “no need whatsoever” for a lengthy period of negotiations following the North’s Assembly elections, Sinn Féin deputy leader has said.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Michelle O’Neill said it was “just not fathomable” that the DUP would not go back into government in Northern Ireland and there should not be a “long drawn out process, this should be done very quickly.
“We should be back in, in government, taking decisions, impacting on people’s lives positively, immediately.
“There’s no need to draw this out for the potential 26-week period,” the former deputy first minister said.
She said Sinn Féin was ready to get back to work “on day one” and it was “for all the parties that want to be there [in the Northern Executive] to work together.
“The DUP have nowhere else to go, they will have to come back into the Executive because there isn’t any other show in town.”
The DUP’s Paul Givan resigned as First Minister earlier this year - which under Stormont’s rules also removed Ms O’Neill from her position as deputy first minister - as part of his party’s campaign against the Northern Ireland protocol.
The DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has said his party will not return to the Executive unless the issues around the protocol are resolved to their satisfaction and has refused to confirm whether his party would take up the deputy first minister role alongside a Sinn Féin first minister.
Greatest number
According to recent polls Sinn Féin is expected to return the greatest number of Assembly members (MLAs) in the election on May 5th, which would bring with it the position of first minister.
This would be highly symbolic - it would be the first time a nationalist has held the position - but has no practical significance, as under Stormont’s power-sharing rules the roles of first and deputy first ministers are a joint office and one cannot be in post without the other.
If an Executive cannot be formed after the election the initial period of negotiations could last up to six months. Former ministers would remain in post but the Assembly could not sit and without a first or deputy first minister no significant or controversial decisions could be taken.
Ms O’Neill played down the significance of Sinn Féin potentially taking the first minister position, saying that it and the deputy first minister role “doesn’t belong to anybody, it doesn’t belong to any one community over another.
“It I a fact that it hasn’t been held by a nationalist to this point, and this election could change that [BUT]I’m more fixated around the fact that I want to lead change,” she said.
However, she also said that the DUP had “painted two red lines, one on the protocol and two that they may have issues with going into government if we are returned as the largest party” and “neither are acceptable.”
Election manifesto
Ms O’Neill was speaking after the launch of her party’s election manifesto on Monday, which included commitments to prioritise health in the next Executive, to allocate additional funds to deal with the cost of living including £230 to every household in Northern Ireland, and to plan for a united Ireland - “one which belongs to us all, including our unionist neighbours.”
It listed among its priorities “securing a date from the Irish and British governments for the referenda on unity provided for in the Good Friday Agreement.”
Asked when this date might be, Ms O’Neill said this was a “decade of opportunity, the decade to change things, the decade to right a wrong”.
Did this mean a Border poll by 2032? I’m saying it’s within this decade, this is a decade of opportunity … I’m less fixated on a date and more fixated on, what does it look like?
“Because I think that’s what people need. I think you’ll only convince people of the merits of change when you tell them what it will look like, so that’s why we need a Citizen’s Assembly to start planning.”
She said she did not consider the question around unity as one of “unionists or nationalists, I look at it as people, and people deserve better … there’s an opportunity for us now to plan something that actually we all have a stake in, we all have ownership in, we all collectively cherish.
“I also understand that means that we as nationalist people should always reach out the arm of friendship, we should push our boundaries, we should try to speak to people who are not yet convinced,” she said.