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LAST UPDATE | 1 Feb 2024
THE DUP HAS given the green light for the recall of the Stormont Assembly, with powersharing due to be restored in the North on Saturday.
The announcement from party leader Jeffrey Donaldson comes after two pieces of legislation contained in the UK Government’s deal to resurrect devolution were fast-tracked through the House of Commons.
The two motions were approved by MPs this afternoon without the need for a formal vote.
The UK government fast-tracked legislation that would realise the measures outlined in its Safeguarding the Union command paper.
This would replace the Windsor Framework’s green lane process at Northern Ireland ports with a “UK internal market system” that will govern the movement of goods inside the United Kingdom.
The regulations will need to be approved by the House of Lords before they can become law. This is expected to take place on 13 February.
The DUP has said the UK government’s package to revive devolution in Belfast has delivered “fundamental change” to UK-EU arrangements on post-Brexit trade.
Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson has previously said negotiations had led to “clear” alterations to the Windsor Framework by ending routine checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland.
Donaldson has written to the outgoing Speaker of the Stormont Assembly, Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey, to confirm his party was prepared to end its two-year blockade on the institutions.
“I expect the Assembly will meet on Saturday following the Speaker consulting and making all necessary arrangements,” he said.
— DUP (@duponline) February 1, 2024
“It is my intention to meet with the leaders of the other executive parties during the course of Friday to finalise arrangements on the key issues that will be tackled by the incoming executive,” added Donaldson.
When the Northern Ireland Assembly does reconvene at Stormont, it will witness the historically significant moment of the appointment of its first nationalist first minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill.
In the UK Commons earlier today, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris sought to reassure MPs that the measures will not reduce the UK’s ability to diverge from EU rules.
“This is an important new safeguard to future-proof Northern Ireland’s constitutional status,” Heaton Harris said.
“No government in the future can agree to another protocol, nor can the UK internal market be salami-sliced by any future agreement with the European Union.”
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood told Donaldson during today’s Commons session: “I think he has done a lot of good work over the past couple of weeks and he’s been very brave.”
However, Eastwood added that the SDLP “don’t support” this command paper.
The SDLP leader said it has “moved far beyond the principles set out in the Good Friday Agreement, it is undermining north-south cooperation, and it’s far too much focused on east-west”.
He said all future negotiation should be done with all parties and both governments so that “everybody can feel comfortable with the result”.
Donaldson said Eastwood made his point “with fortitude and determination”, but added that he makes “no apology” as a unionist for having a “focus on protecting, preserving and strengthening and binding together” the UK, of which the North is a “proud part”.
He added:
And today is an important moment for us as unionists. The strengthening of our constitutional position within the United Kingdom is important.”
While a major change to UK-EU trade arrangements would require the approval of the bloc’s 27 member states, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government has said the changes outlined in the deal with the DUP are “operational” in nature and don’t change the “fundamentals”.
This morning, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that the European Commision would “have some questions” and will want to look at “some of the detail”, adding that he had spoken to the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about the deal.
“There are definitely going to be some questions about what was agreed between the UK government in the DUP but nobody is, at this stage, saying that there are any red flags, anything that gives us major concern,” Varadkar told reporters in Brussels while attending an EU leaders summit focussed on renewing financial support for Ukraine.
Varadkar also said that Irish “red lines” related to the status of the border with Northern the Republic’s position in the EU single market had not been crossed.
“From our point of view in Ireland, our priority was always to make sure there was no hard border between North and South. I think that’s been achieved and protected,” he said.
Yesterday, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris spoke to EU Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic to explain the proposed changes detailed in the command paper.
In a statement, the Commission said it would “carefully analyse” the new measures.
With reporting from Hayley Halpin and Press Association
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This could get interesting.. The uk government have agreed a deal with a backward political party in Northern Ireland without receiving the green light from the EU as to whether the details of same agreement align with the overall commitments the British gave during brexit negotiations… it is almost as if the DUP wore the British Dow so they just agreed whatever to shut them up.. like parents giving in to a bold child…
@Andy Mc Laughlin: The DUP didn’t get too much of what it wanted (NI effectively remains in the Customs Union and Single Market): just enough for it to be able to claim a victory of sorts. There’s nothing much for the EU to object to.
@Andy Mc Laughlin: I can’t see this arrangement lasting very long. The DUP now know that by sulking and withdrawing from Govt., Westminster will gradually give in to more demands. Who is going to police goods coming into N Ireland which are bound for 26 counties.? Are we going to have to set up Customs posts?
@Patrick MC Dermott:
What do you call it when SF boycotts Stormont? A sulk or a tantrum?
@Vincent Alexander: an heroic day. Best to keep Sinn Fein away. We all like the current arrangement of having our lives destroyed.
@Vincent Alexander: A stand against corruption?
@Vincent Alexander: Two cheeks of the same backside
I think all Ireland should have a public holiday for Michelle o Neil becoming first minister . remember what goes around comes around .
@Glen Kelly: why? Sinn Fein haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in the offices they held. Given their tenuous grasp of economics among other things, I for one am not expecting much.
@Harry Callahan: Have Sinn Fein held an economics ministry?
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: murphy
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: mercifully not.
It won’t last dup will find other hurdle to moan about ,SHINN FEIN FIRST MINSTER WOW
@Glen Kelly: Do you remember when it was all ‘joint first minister’ chat? Lol.
@Glen Kelly: Sammy Wilson is bursting a blood vessel. He has been the best recruiting officer SF ever had.
Didn’t the assembly break up over the Irish language act. ? Does this mean that a conservative British government has told the DUP to enact it? Imagine their reaction to the first item on the agenda being the Irish language act.
@Kevin McNally: SF brought down the Assembly over that. It was ultimately enacted as The Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022 at Westminster.
@Brendan O’Brien: Or rather SF brought down the Assembly over ‘Cash for Ash’, but the lack of an Irish Language Act was an obstacle to its restoration.
@Brendan O’Brien: because you can’t be properly Irish if you don’t speak the language. A load of b….cks. Average Irish teenager listens to Taylor swift, watches American media, holidays abroad, watches English football and so on. Language hardly figures.
It took almost 100 years to start getting rid of civil war politics in the 26 counties but ffg have a rose tented opinion of the horrors there forefathers inflicted on mainly women and children
@Robert Halvey:
The horrors inflicted by the PIRA are still within living memory and SF are still glorifying the perpetrators. It is highly likely some are senior members of the party.
@Vincent Alexander: Wonder why you failed to mention the planned commeration by the Blueshirts to honour the Black and Tans/RIC. Ironically the poster boy of the Blueshirts Michael Collins rightly had no problem in exterminating the above. Bit hypocritical by the Blueshirts don’t you think.
@Vincent Alexander: The Nationalist community in the North welcomed the British Army when they first arrived.
They viewed them as protectors against the vililantyism of the Unionist community.
And then the British Army started shooing unarmed people on civil rights marches.
The Brutish have a long sullied history of such things, including Amritsar and our own Croke Park.
It turned out that the British Army were the best recruiters for the IRA.
@Vincent Alexander: And yet we had a FF gun runner for the PIRA who was elected Taoiseach in the late 1970′s. The same man who sent a memorandum to the FF National Executive, years earlier, that the use of violence represented FF policy.
These holier than thou FFG people seem to forget the history of their own parties when it suits. The history of their own violence was certainly within living memory then and now.
@Donal Desmond:
Why should I? Trumpism again by SF supporters – derogatory name calling.
My parents lived through the 1916 era and it was not all as the sanitised history of the period as promoted by Republicans.
A group of our patriots on the way to Dublin shot a RIC policeman on his way from mass. As an Irishman he had as every right to be in the RIC. There are also two plaques commemorating two brothers supposedly shot by British army. Local lore has it that they were shot by the IRA in retaliation for a brother that failed to go on a mission. As regards the Black and Tans, it is the innocent Palestinians that are suffering from the actions of Hamas. Likewise the reaction of the Black and Tans to the goading of the IRA.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere:
It was wrong what happened on Bloody Sunday. There were plenty of subsequent opportunities for a peaceful settlement in the North but it didn’t suit the extremists on both sides. If McGuinness and Paisley became the Chuckle Brothers after 30 years of bloodshed why didn’t it happen sooner. Take a look at the current crop of politicians and you can see who gained from the “Troubles”.
@Vincent Alexander: It was a war for independence, People on both sides died. Ironically FG would have you believe violence was perhaps not necessary, conveniently failing to mention their political predecessor’s were part of that violence. FF the so called Republican party are Republican only when it suits their political agenda. Again Ironically a lot of Black and Tans ended up in Palestine defending a murderous British empire, the same murderous empire that the IRA took on.
As for Hamas they have every right to defend their homeland against the terrorist state of Israel.
@Donal Desmond: I’m not speaking for FG but I believe in most cases violence is not necessary. The IRA had no mandate to kill. Are the South Armagh diesel launderers republican. Not alone are they republicans but gentlemen republicans in SF’s reckoning. Maybe it is also ironic that Israel was held up to us as an ideal state when with the aid of corporal punishment used to try and drum Irish into us. A case of republican democracy.
Hamas knew when they carried out their rapes, murders and hostage taking on the 7th Oct there would be retaliation. They were not concerned that the civilian population would bear the brunt of the it. Action similar to the IRA in the North for thirty years
@John H Green: Did you think of that all by yourself or from the handbook of responses from Varadkar/ Martin.
@Vincent Alexander: Did the American revolution have a mandate? Every revolution that happened through out history did not go to the polls to get a mandate .Sinn Fein won a landslide Victory in the 1918 election which gave them a mandate to expel the murderous British empire. As for Israel the also had Terrorist organisations who had no problem in Killing British soldiers and officials…The king David Hotel bombing a d the hanging of British soldiers. The murders of innocent Arabs by Israeli terrorists that is still being perpetrated to this day. Israeli terrorists existed long before the foundation of Hamas.
It should be remembered and acknowledged by all of us that a return to the dysfunctional version of politics that is the NI assembly is better than the alternative of a return to the violence of the past.
That said, I give it between two weeks and a year before it all falls apart again.
Either the hardliners in the DUP will oust the current leadership and declare it a victory for the true flag bearers of their tradition, or some perceived afront to unionism or a simple instance of not getting their way, will cause them to once again ceremoniously throw their toys out of the pram.
Us all being united as part of a wider EU was the only thing that has ever truly solved the problems of the border on the island of Ireland and made the border itself irrelevant in our hearts and minds.
@Dvsespaña: It was terribly stupid of the DUP to back Brexit. The border, paradoxically, was much more likely to persist when it was irrelevant: something we barely had to think about. Now it’s been thrust into the political forefront.
@Dvsespaña: I don’t agree that we only got rid of the border because we’re part of the EU. The Good Friday agreement happened irrespective of the EU and despite the compromise that was needed, it was overwhelmingly supported by the majority of people on the island. The EU can take credit for many things but I don’t believe our peace process is one of them.
@Declan Doherty: That’s not what is being said. The border could only be removed due to both Ireland and Northern Ireland being in a customs union and single market together. Outside of two countries being in a union together, WTO terms require a border between both.
Aparthied is almost over
@Kevin O Brien: In NI, it’s been over since the 1970s.
@Brendan O’Brien: Well that’s a lie
@Daniel Roche: Really? What ‘apartheid’ has there been there since then?
@Brendan O’Brien: Do you really believe that the RUC was welcoming to members of the nationalist community in 1980?
In 1990?
And beyond?
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: you mean Ira terrorists ghettos . There was no problem for the RUC to go onto many nationalist areas . The majority of people across NI supported the RUC .
Turkeys and Christmas spring to mind. The end is nigh for the Unionist stronghold.
Another caveat is the Unionists demanding things coming from the UK having “Not from the EU” labels on them, seriously..you can’t make this s….up…so what will shops and sellers do, pass those costs onto the consumer in NI.
Well done Unionists you f…muppets…hurting your own people again because of your pathetic sovereignty.
The next phase is known as the end game. The British will ease their way out of the north over the next two decades. The border poll will be a formality.
@Mike smith: Yeah but the majority will have to vote to leave the UK, it’s not a case of Britain easing its way out.
I hate to be overly pessimistic but it hasn’t actually happened yet.
have your say