Foster’s fury at Leo’s bid to get North back on track
ARLENE Foster has criticised Leo Varadkar’s latest attempts to get the North’s administration up and running again.
The ministerial executive at Stormont collapsed 19 months ago and repeated rounds of negotiations have failed to restore it.
On Tuesday, the Taoiseach told a media briefing in Dublin: ‘We would intend, in the autumn some time, trying again to get the parties in Northern Ireland together.
‘I think the absence of any clarity around Brexit makes that very difficult but if we can have that in October, I think there is an opportunity, certainly before the end of the year, to get the assembly and executive up and running.’
However, DUP leader Ms Foster said: ‘Those are matters for the United Kingdom government and the parties in Northern Ireland.’
The former first minister told BBC Radio Ulster: ‘We haven’t heard from our own government in relation to this, all we’ve had is comments from the Irish Republic’s Government.’
Stormont crashed in January last year amid allegations of Mrs Foster’s links to the cash for ash scandal.
And divisions later widened after the DUP refused to agree to an Irish language act, LGBT rights and investigating the legacy of the Troubles.
The last bid to resurrect the troubled institutions failed in February when the DUP pulled the plug on talks with Sinn Féin.
Sinn Féin insisted a draft deal had been signed off with the DUP at that point, and accused the party of getting cold feet in the face of an internal revolt from grassroots members angry about potential concessions in the dispute over the Irish language.
The DUP denied the claim, insisting it exchanged numerous papers with Sinn Féin during the negotiation process but none amounted to a draft agreement.
The main logjam relates to Sinn No talks: DUP boss Arlene Foster Féin insistence on a free-standing piece of legislation to protect Irish language speakers.
The DUP said it will legislate to protect Irish, but only as part of wider legislation that takes in other cultures, such as the Ulster Scots tradition. Yesterday, Mrs Foster made clear that her opposition to a standalone Irish language act was ‘non-negotiable’.
On Monday, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said the party’s stance in February remained its ‘bottom line’ going into any fresh negotiations.
Yesterday, she told Radio Ulster: ‘We can talk from here to eternity, what we need is delivery, we need delivery on agreement, we need delivery on peoples’ rights.
‘I think constructive politics, grown-up politics, responsible politics, recognises that the days of prevarication and allowing the DUP to hold back change are over and any set of talks needs to be premised on that very, very clear understanding.’
In response to Mr Varadkar’s comments on Tuesday, the British Government said: ‘The secretary of state [for the North Karen Bradley] and UK government’s top priority remains the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland.
‘She will continue to work with all the Northern Ireland parties – and with the Irish Government within the three-stranded approach – to remove the barriers to restoring the executive and a fully functioning assembly.’
‘These are matters for the UK’