The Taoiseach has criticised the “exclusion” of Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald from a political meeting in Belfast, saying she had attended UK government meetings in the past and “if it is a change I honestly don’t think it’s a positive one”.
“The approach we take in the Irish Government is that if we ask to meet somebody we don’t prescribe who’s on their delegation, that’s the protocol that we follow … I think that’s perhaps a better protocol,” Leo Varadkar said.
The controversy over the decision by the UK government not to allow Ms McDonald to attend the meeting deepened on Thursday after the Northern Secretary said it might not have been wise to invite her because she was elected in an EU member state.
The round-table discussion between the leaders of the main Northern parties hosted by Mr Heaton-Harris and the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly went ahead on Wednesday without Sinn Féin or the SDLP.
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Speaking to the media for the first time since the meeting, Mr Heaton-Harris said “many factors” had gone into the thought process, and “one, to be quite frank, is that the UK government is negotiating with the European Union”.
“We wanted to update the Northern Ireland parties on that negotiation and, with the greatest of respect, Mary Lou [McDonald] is a representative of a parliament in an EU member state. That might not have been seen as a wise thing to do.”
The explanation from Mr Heaton-Harris differed from that given by Mr Cleverly and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) on Wednesday, who blamed diplomatic protocol and said the meeting was for “Northern Ireland politicians”, but chimed with what a Sinn Féin source said the party had been told.
Responding to the Northern Secretary’s comments, Ms McDonald, who is a TD for Dublin Central, said “all of us know that the way that we make progress is together, that’s how this works, that’s what the history of the last 25 years reflects. Any idea of excluding anybody, excluding the leader of any party needs to be scotched and knocked on the head now.”
The Sinn Féin vice-president and first minister designate, Michelle O’Neill, said “today is a new day” and added that Mr Heaton-Harris would be “better placing his energy and his efforts on trying to restore the Assembly and the executive”.
Mr Heaton-Harris could not confirm if Ms McDonald would be permitted to attend subsequent meetings, but said he had invited her to dinner. “We’re not interested in dinner,” Ms O’Neill responded.
Asked about Mr Heaton-Harris’s comments, the Alliance Party’s deputy leader Stephen Farry said he “needs to back down from that” and the UK government “need to de-escalate their language and they need to climb down and find a means of ensuring that we have proper inclusive talks at the next opportunity”.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said he had “a concern looking ahead if in the future Mary Lou McDonald became taoiseach and we had Michelle O’Neill as first minister, who’s the boss, who’s in charge?”
The controversy came as the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, were in Northern Ireland for the first time since they swapped roles in December to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol, the restoration of the Northern Executive and legacy issues.
The UK’s leader of the opposition, the Labour leader Keir Starmer, also visited Belfast on Thursday.
Mr Martin met Mr Heaton-Harris in Hillsborough on Thursday morning, while Mr Varadkar held separate meetings with the North’s five largest parties.
Speaking to the media on Thursday morning, Mr Martin said he had a “very good meeting” with Mr Heaton-Harris. He said the row over Ms McDonald’s attendance at the meeting had been “unfortunate”, and the Irish Government “got no heads up in relation to that at all, I think that needs to be stated very categorically”.
“We would have had no difficulty if Mary Lou McDonald was at that meeting but that’s a matter for the foreign secretary.”
In his comments following the meeting with Mr Martin, Mr Heaton-Harris said there had been a “tiny bit of progress” in the talks between the EU and UK over the Northern Ireland protocol but there was “still a way to go”.
“We are talking in good faith, and as I stand here now there are talks going on, so let’s see where they get to.”
Speaking following Sinn Féin’s meeting with Mr Varadkar, Ms McDonald said it was “very constructive” and the party “shared our strong view that a deal on the protocol is possible … and we believe that the window we now have has to be grasped with both hands. We think now that with goodwill, good faith, that things could move quite quickly, so this is a test of goodwill for all parties, it’s a test certainly for the British government,” she said.
However, speaking on the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme on Thursday, Mr Donaldson said the EU and UK were not “anywhere close to a deal” and there was “still a lot of ground to be covered before we get to that point”. He said that while “some progress has been made on some technical issues, there are major political issues in those negotiations that have not been addressed”.
Northern Ireland remains without a functioning Assembly or executive after the DUP refused to re-enter the power-sharing government following elections in May as part of its protest against the Northern Ireland protocol.
Earlier this week the EU and UK reached agreement on post-Brexit data-sharing which will allow the EU access to real-time data on goods moving from the UK into Northern Ireland.
