Sinn Féin would be willing to allow the Northern Ireland Executive fall and new elections called if the parties cave in to the British government imposing budget cuts of up to 6 per cent, Gerry Adams has said.

The Executive must find £200 million (€256 million) of cuts, amounting to 4 per cent of departmental budgets and up to 6 per cent if health spending is protected, as the British government has penalised the North for not endorsing welfare reforms passed by Westminster in February last year.

‘This agenda’

“It isn’t that we want an election but if some of the parties in the North are going to follow this agenda, then let them bring it on to the floor of the Assembly and give the people their say,” said Mr Adams.

Speaking on the fringes of the annual meeting of Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation in New York, Mr Adams said he would not like to speculate on whether the Executive would collapse over the budget dispute, which is the subject of talks at Stormont today.

He noted that in the wake of Scotland's rejection of independence, British prime minister David Cameron committed to devolve more powers to the people of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin would look to keep the British government to that commitment on the proposed budget cuts, he said.

“The party’s position is that we should unite as an Executive at telling the British government that we are not going to impose these cuts,” he said.

Budget issue

He did not see why the Executive should fall out on the budget issue given that the Executive represents the people of Northern Ireland and that they voted on a programme of government that contained no reference to welfare cuts.

People in the North were “vulnerable”, he said, and it was a “very small economy” so to cut such a large amount of resources from the economy would be “very, very negative”.

“They don’t take any account at all of the fact that we are a community which is coming out of conflict and it is mostly the poor working-class areas that have suffered the most.”