Northern Ireland executive business on hold for IRA talks

Politicians are due to debate a Sinn Fein motion today condemning the murders of former IRA members Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan and calling on anyone with information to pass it on to the police.

With the police saying the killings were carried out by members of the Provisional IRA (PIRA) – which was supposed to have disappeared a decade ago – the province’s political institutions have been plunged into crisis.

The British government says it will legislate on welfare reform in Northern Ireland if the parties at Stormont cannot reach an agreement on the issue.

Crisis

Assembly members are due to get back to work today after the summer break, but Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader and first minister Peter Robinson said
there would be no further routine meetings of the power-sharing executive until the crisis is resolved.

Talks are due to start this week at Stormont House, with Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers representing London and Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan representing Dublin.

Mr Robinson said: “If we are not satisfied that the parties are applying themselves to achieving an outcome in a reasonable timeframe we will initiate a further step or further steps.

“If it becomes apparent to us that a satisfactory resolution in the talks is not possible then as a last resort ministerial resignations will follow.

“However, we must make it clear that any election which follows such an eventuality will not be an election to return to the present assembly arrangements as we will not nominate a first minister until a fundamental and more wide-ranging negotiation produces a system that can fully function.”

He said the assembly was not “fit for purpose” even before this summer’s murders, which police say were carried out by individual PIRA members.

Even though police insist the IRA is not back on a war footing, the disclosure that the organisation – once considered the armed wing of Sinn Fein – still exists has rocked Northern Ireland’s divided political establishment.

George Hamilton, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said the IRA still exists for peaceful purposes and the shooting was carried out by individual PIRA members but not sanctioned by the group’s leadership.

Welfare row

Unionists support a package of benefits cuts imposed by Westminster, while Sinn Fein is opposed to austerity measures which it says will hurt the most vulnerable.

Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers said: “We have come to the conclusion that if the Executive cannot reach agreement on implementing the budget and welfare aspects of the Stormont House Agreement, as a last resort the Government will have to step in and legislate at Westminster for welfare reform in Northern Ireland.

“We would do so reluctantly, and only if we had exhausted all the realistic alternatives.

“But we cannot stand by and let this situation drag on indefinitely with Stormont becoming less and less able to deliver crucial public services.”