The UK prime minister met the leaders of the North’s main political parties on Thursday night as the political crisis at Stormont continues.
It is Rishi Sunak’s first visit to Northern Ireland since taking office in October and is part of a two-day trip to the North which will include meetings with businesses and communities and a visit to a shipyard.
The engagement, which has been described by Downing Street as an “introductory meeting and informal discussions”, is not expected to lead to any change in the current deadlock.
Speaking to reporters following the meeting, the Sinn Féin vice-president and the North’s First Minister designate Michelle O’Neill said it had been a “useful exchange” and she had spoken to the prime minister directly on a number of issues, including the need to find a swift resolution to issues around the Northern Ireland protocol.
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“He said that he wanted to find an agreed way forward, that he wanted to find a negotiated solution and he wanted to work at pace in terms of that,” Ms O’Neill said.
“But time has been dwindling, we’ve been here for far too long in this space without an Executive so I made the case to him directly that this needs to be done speedily, they need to be directly involved in the conversation and get an agreed way forward and to get it now.
“He heard what I had to say, the fact that we’re being left in a political limbo here because of their actions, they’ve bought more time and there needs to be a reason,” she said.
Ms O’Neill said Mr Sunak had taken her remarks on board and “he said he would be moving at pace but wasn’t more definitive than that, but we need more than warm words and good mood music, we need actually a deal to be struck.”
She also raised the issue of the £600 energy payment, which has yet to be paid to people in the North, and the nurses strike, which began in Northern Ireland on Thursday.
Mr Sunak’s visit follows discussions that took place earlier on Thursday between the parties and the Northern Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris.
Representatives from the five Northern parties said after the meeting that there had been little progress and no practical suggestions to resolve the situation.
In a statement issued afterwards, Mr Heaton-Harris said he had “urged all parties to work together to restore the Executive as soon as possible, reiterating that this political impasse cannot continue indefinitely” and that the UK government’s priority was “to see the return of a strong, locally accountable devolved government.”
Northern Ireland has been without an Assembly or Executive since the May elections, when the DUP refused to re-enter the powersharing institutions until issues around the Northern Ireland protocol, which it opposes, are resolved to its satisfaction.
The deadline for the restoration of the Assembly has been pushed back by the Northern Secretary until January 19th.
“I think he [Mr Heaton-Harris] is bereft of a plan,” Ms O’Neill told reporters following the meeting. “We’re still left in political limbo. There were no concrete proposals as to how they’re going to reach an agreed way forward on the protocol.”
“We covered a wide range of issues, including the ongoing negotiations between the UK government and the European Union,” Mr Donaldson said. “There’s very little to report on that.
“We want to see progress made, we want to see a ramping up of these talks to try to get to a solution.”
Talks are continuing between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland protocol, the post-Brexit trading arrangement which avoided a hard Border on the island of Ireland by placing a customs and economic border in the Irish Sea.
The UK foreign secretary James Cleverly and the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič held a face-to-face meeting on Thursday.
In a social media post following the meeting Mr Cleverly said there had been “more important discussions today”, adding that “our teams continue to meet and I look forward to speaking again soon.”
