Call for action on stalemate at Stormont

THE UK and Irish governments should publish their proposals to revive power-sharing in Northern Ireland if no deal is done this week, the leader of the SDLP has claimed.

Colum Eastwood said London and Dublin should set out fair and compromise solutions to the deadlock if the DUP and Sinn Fein do not come to agreement.

Major blocks to getting Stormont back up and running include republicans’ demands for a standalone Irish language act to give formal rights to speakers. There are also issues around socalled legacy investigations relating to the Troubles.

As power-sharing negotiations resume in Belfast, Mr Eastwood said that as crises build in health and education it is not credible or sustainable to leave success of the talks in the hands of the DUP and Sinn Fein.

“We acknowledge that these parties have the big mandates from the electorate but they do not have a mandate to hold the North ransom in a position of permanent stalemate,” the MLA for Foyle said.

Ministers have not sat at Stormont for seven months, after the late Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy first minister in a row over the DUP’s handling of a botched green energy scheme.

Mr Eastwood said that if it became clear that the two big parties cannot do a power-sharing deal then London and Dublin should make their joint proposals public. “They should then publicly challenge all the parties to sign up to it or reject it,” he added.