The British government will take over responsibility for welfare if the Stormont parties can't agree on the issue, Northern Secretary Theresa Villiers has warned.
Ms Villiers also said on Saturday night that talks will begin on Tuesday aimed at resolving the crisis caused by the murder of Belfast republican Kevin McGuigan and the police assessment that IRA members were involved. The talks would also address the non implementation of the Stormont House Agreement.
Ms Villiers has now upped the political ante considerably by threatening to remove the Northern Executive’s devolved control of welfare and return it to Westminster if Northern politicians, particularly Sinn Féin and the SDLP, won’t sign up to welfare reform as was agreed in the Stormont House Agreement.
"We have come to the conclusion that if the Executive cannot reach agreement on implementing the budget and welfare aspects of the Stormont House Agreement, as a last resort the government will have to step in and legislate at Westminster for welfare reform in Northern Ireland, " she said on Saturday night.
“We would do so reluctantly, and only if we had exhausted all the realistic alternatives,” Ms Villiers told the British Irish Association’s annual conference in Cambridge.
The Stormont House Agreement, including its welfare element, was agreed by the North’s five main parties last Christmas but stalled when in the spring Sinn Féin and the SDLP switched tack and decided to oppose welfare cuts.
It also put on hold the Northern Executive getting £2 billion in additional spending powers. This further resulted in the Executive this autumn facing a £600 million shortfall which former DUP finance Minister Arlene Foster said would make Stormont "unsustainable".
Justifying her welfare warning Ms Villiers said, “We cannot stand by and let this situation drag on indefinitely with Stormont becoming less and less able to deliver crucial public services.
“If this situation is not resolved, then there will be increasing pressure on health, policing and other front line services as departments start to run out of money.
“The people who will suffer as a result include some of the most vulnerable in our society and in those circumstances the government would be left with no choice but to act.”
Added Ms Villiers, "We will not fund a more generous welfare system in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. There is no more money. We have a duty to manage our finances responsibly."
Ms Villiers said however that the British government would release funding to support a public service redundancy scheme. Under the Stormont House Agreement 20,000 public sector jobs are to be shed in the coming four years at a cost of £700 million.
“We recognise the pressing need for public sector reform in Northern Ireland,” said Ms Villiers. “We therefore believe that the voluntary exit scheme for public sector workers contained in the Agreement must go ahead.”
In relation to the assessment by the PSNI chief constable George Hamilton that the IRA still exists and that some of its members were involved in Mr McGuigan's murder, although without the sanction of the leadership, Ms Villiers said the British government would not "compromise" on the rule of law.
“Where there is evidence of paramilitary activity or membership of an illegal paramilitary organisation it will be pursued by the police,” she said.
Ms Villiers however said she accepted that “all” parties in the Northern Executive were committed to the principles of democracy and non-violence.
“But I am also aware that the assessment of the chief constable which I fully share regarding the continued existence of some PIRA organisational structures has caused grave concern, as have the criminal activities of individuals associated with so-called loyalist paramilitary organisations,” she said.
"So that is why, after discussions with the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland parties, we have moved swiftly to convene a new talks process to grapple with these two very serious challenges," added Ms Villiers.
The Northern Secretary said these negotiations, which are to begin on Tuesday, were designed “to secure the full implementation of the Stormont House Agreement and to consider with urgency the issues arising from the continued existence of paramilitary organisations from whichever side of the community they come”.
The Sinn Féin chairman Declan Kearney, also in a speech on Saturday to the British Irish Association, which he made public, again contradicted the chief constable's assessment and said the IRA has "gone away".
“An escalating political crisis does exist. But it has nothing to do with the fiction of an existing IRA. Attempting to explain away the current serious political situation by using the pretext of an IRA, which has gone away, is a complete diversion,” he added.
“What’s now unfolding is the culmination of five years of political instability within the political process. Central to that has been the political failure of both the British and Irish governments to fulfill their responsibilities to act as co guarantors for both the peace and political processes,” said Mr Kearney.
“That is evidenced by the negative mismanagement of the British government since 2010, and the semi-detached approach adopted by the Irish government in the same period.”
