LAST UPDATE | 9 Aug 2023

TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said “alternatives” and a “Plan B” will need to be considered if Stormont is not restored by the autumn.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is in Belfast today to meet with the main political parties of Northern Ireland in a bid to help restore Stormont.

Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government for more than a year amid unionist concerns around post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Varadkar reiterated the “pressing need” to get the Stormont institutions in place again “without delay” and has met with Sinn Féin’s vice president Michelle O’Neill, the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson, and the UUP’s Doug Beattie.

He also sat down with Alliance Party leader Naomi Long and the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole.

Speaking to reporters this afternoon after visiting Windsor Park in Belfast Varadkar said there is an opportunity to restore the region’s institutions in the autumn.

He said the Irish Government “will do everything we can to assist that”.

“I do think, though, that if that opportunity is missed, if it’s the case that the institutions can’t be re-established in the autumn, well, then I do think at that point we have to start having conversations about alternatives, about plan B.

“That’s very much a conversation that I’m keen to have with the UK Government. I don’t want to speculate too much at the moment, because I still believe it is possible to get the institutions up and running in the autumn,” he said.

“I do think the suspension has gone on for a long time. There is drift. And that’s not good for Northern Ireland.”

Asked by reporters about what those alternatives would be, Mr Varadkar said he did not want to discuss that on this occasion.

“That’s kind of a conversation that we’re having [with] some of the party leaders today, a conversation that I think we need to have between the British and Irish governments, because we’re not the sovereign government in Northern Ireland – we accept that.

“But we are co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement and if the Good Friday Agreement isn’t working, if institutions aren’t functioning, well, then it makes sense that the British and Irish governments work together to talk about what arrangements could be put in place.”

Asked if this meant joint authority, he added: “I don’t mean anything specifically. I understand again why you’re asking that question but, as you know, there’s no provision for joint authority in the Good Friday Agreement, there’s also no provision for direct rule in the Good Friday Agreement.”

However, he said it is a “real possibility” the institutions can be re-established in October and November.

Speaking more generally, Varadkar said the very close relationship between the Irish and British governments that existed in the past was disrupted by Brexit and “wasn’t good” for years, but has “improved dramatically and immeasurably” in the past year or so.

He added it still is not where it should be and that Northern Ireland works best when Britain and Ireland work “hand in hand”.

‘Long overdue’

Speaking after her meeting with Varadkar, Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill said “public patience is wearing thin” with the Democratic Unionist Party over the lack of a functioning executive in Northern Ireland.

She said she agreed with the Taoiseach that the British and Irish governments need to be working together to revive the executive.

“I’ve heard more urgency from the Taoiseach today than I’ve heard from the British Government in terms of the need to restore the executive.

“Minds are going to quickly turn to return to school in September. People still are sitting, not knowing if their child is going to have a place in September.

“Alongside that we’re going to be in a whole new budget process where potentially the British Government will again set a budget for our public services,” O’Neill said.

She said it was “not acceptable” and “not good enough”.

“Patience is just wearing thin with the DUP.

“We need an executive today. It’s long overdue, the public need it to be there fighting their corner, dealing with the budgetary situation that we have, fighting their corner in terms of good public services. There shouldn’t be any more delay as to that,” she said.

Meanwhile, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson described his meeting with Varadkar as “very useful”.

Speaking to reporters at the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast, he said: “We talked about matters of mutual interest and concern, and obviously trade is one of those areas, cross-border trade.” 

Donaldson said his focus at the moment is on resolving the “major problems” that were created by the Northern Ireland Protocol. 

He said: “I want to see the assembly and executive restored, properly functioning, but I am very clear: we need a solution that works for Northern Ireland that resolves the problems created by the Northern Ireland Protocol and that protects in law our ability to trade within the UK internal market with the rest of the United Kingdom.”

He added that engagement with the Government has intensified in recent weeks and said he hopes to have a “definitive response” from it in the next few weeks that will allow the DUP to put a proposition forward. 

Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said the UK Government needs to “work more” with political parties in Northern Ireland.

Beattie characterised his meeting with Varadkar as a “neighbourly catch-up” and said:

“It’s all well and good the Taoiseach saying that the UK Government needs to talk to them [the Irish government] more, I would argue UK Government needs to talk to us more.

“Because I want to be involved, I want to add value, I want to fix the problems at the impasse that where we’re on now.”

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said she is concerned that the window to restore the powersharing institutions before a UK general election is closing.

“I remain very concerned that as time passes the crisis that faces our public services and public finances is deepening,” she said.

“If we do not resolve this and resolve it quickly, then I think the window of opportunity to do so ahead of a general election that is coming in the UK, and a general election which will be subsequently coming in the south, will close.

“I think it’s incumbent on all of us as politicians to take the responsibilities that we took on as elected representatives in the election in 2022 seriously.

“And I think its incumbent on the DUP now to step up and do the job they were elected to do,” Long added.

She said “people will not wait around forever” for a solution to the Northern Ireland protocol issues that the DUP have raised.

“There’s no-one in the DUP who doesn’t recognise the catastrophic implications for unionism if they don’t go back into the assembly during this window of opportunity.

“People will not wait around forever for these changes to happen that the DUP will be satisfied (with),” Long said.

She added: “It’s in everybody’s interests for this to happen, and to happen now. 

“I think, ultimately, the DUP voters and electorate deserve to have their party in government and doing the job they were electing them to do.”

SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole has said most people in Northern Ireland are “frustrated” with what he described as a lack of engagement on DUP over devolution, which he said was “increasingly abetted by the British Government”.

Mr O’Toole said: “For the last few decades, this place has only made progress whenever the British and Irish governments have been operating together in order to bring focus to delivery and to making this place work.

“It’s clear that the Irish Government want to do that, the Taoiseach was clear about that today.

“But for months now, if not more than a year, or years, we’ve seen British Government play a role with the strange dance with the DUP, trying to understand what the demands of the DUP are, trying to indulge the DUP around its demands, but it’s not always been clear what the DUP demands are.

“We need to see resolution to this quickly because devolution could be moving past a point of no return.

“There’s such high levels of public cynicism about the functioning of Stormont, but there is also collapsing public services in Northern Ireland, there are people who are struggling with the cost of living, there are people who are not able to access healthcare because the NHS here is, in some places, at collapse,” O’Toole said.

“We don’t have functioning democratic accountability. In a really basic sense, we don’t have a functioning government here. The DUP and the British Government need to understand that that can’t go on.”

Mr O’Toole said if the DUP does not allow devolution to function, then there will be accelerated conversations about Stormont reform and there would be “something like joint authority from the British and Irish government”.

DUP split

Donaldson was also asked by reporters about an email sent to party members earlier this month.

He denied suggesting the party was split over the Windsor Framework in the message.

He had suggested in the message that briefings against the party were taking place, motivated by a desire to gain media coverage or advance a personal agenda.

“There was nothing in my email suggesting there was a split within the party over the Windsor Framework,” Donaldson said.

“I was talking about the need for unionists to work together, and I think that is what the vast majority of unionist voters want to see: that co-operation.

“As you know, I’ve been meeting with Doug Beattie and the Ulster Unionists, we’ve been taking forward our conversations around greater unionist co-operation, and I expect the same within my own party as well.

“It’s important that we (have) good discipline, particularly at this time when our focus is on getting a solution that restores Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.

“But let me be clear: the propositions that we have put to the Government, the paper that went to the Government on the Windsor Framework was collectively agreed by our party officers, and that of course includes Lord Dodds.”

Asked if he discussed internal division within the Democratic Unionist Party with Jeffrey Donaldson, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said their meeting was confidential and it would not be right to speak on his behalf.

However, Varadkar said: “Jeffrey is somebody I’ve known down the years and I believe that he’s somebody who wants devolution, who believes in devolution and thinks that’s the right thing for Northern Ireland.”

Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party was also asked about Donaldson denying there was a split within the DUP over the Windsor Framework. Beattie said: “Every political party has differences of opinion, whether we call that a split, or whether we call that ‘where people are going in different directions’, it’s really up to him to decide what it is.

“But I suppose he’s articulating the fact that every party will have disagreements. It’s up to them to fix them but the bottom line is we need to deal with the issue around the Windsor framework.

“The boycott has not worked and has not achieved any work workable outcomes. So it’s better to be in Stormont working to find solutions than it is standing outside complaining about it,” Beattie said.

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said those that do not believe there are rifts within the DUP “have been living under a rock”.

She said: “Those rifts, I don’t think, are news. What is news, and it has to have been factored in before that email was written, is that the party leader is appealing for unity, quite publicly.

“As a party leader, if I wrote an email like that to my party, I would know that that was going to be reported and leaked.

“So, you do that in the full knowledge that that information is going to be in the public domain and I think the fact that Sir Jeffrey is pleading publicly with his own colleagues to back him, I think it makes no sense unless there is a deep divide within the party, which simply confirms what I think we’ve all witnessed over the last 12 months.”

Elsewhere, while in Belfast the Taoiseach is also conducting a number of civic and business engagements, with Linfield Football Club, the GAA Ulster Council, Federation of Small Businesses and Women in Business.

With reporting from PA.