Key talks begin to save Stormont
Parties agree to meet despite fraught relations
TALKS begin at 9.30am t o day as t he North’s politicians attempt to avoid the collapse of the Stormont government.
Arlene Foster, the DUP’s acting first minister since Peter Robinson stepped aside, has said her party will take part in the talks as long as assurances from the British government are provided.
Sinn Féin TD Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said his party would also participate even though his party believed the crisis had been ‘contrived’ by unionist politicians.
Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said he was hopeful that the talks could bring the parties back from the brink.
The crisis and imminent collapse of the Northern Assembly was precipitated by the arrest of Sinn Féin’s northern chairman, Bobby Storey, last week.
This led to the Ulster Unionists and the DUP calling for the suspension of Stormont while the PSNI investigates the affair.
Mr Storey, a long-time friend of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, was picked up along with two other prominent republicans in connection with the murder of Kevin McGuigan last month.
Mr Storey was not charged with any crime and yesterday he held a press conference i n Belfast – flanked by Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald – where he reiterated his innocence and announced that he would be suing the PSNI for his wrongful arrest.
The former senior IRA member also addressed accusations that the IRA is still in existence, saying they have turned from a caterpillar into a butterfly and flown away.
Mr Storey and two other republicans were taken into custody on Wednesday, and released without charge on Thursday night.
But while they were being questioned by detectives, Stormont’s f i rst minister Peter Robinson stepped down and three of his DUP ministers also resigned from the Stormont Executive.
The DUP mass resignation threat and subsequent walkout was prompted by the three arrests, amid claims the investigation into the shooting of former IRA man McGuigan had reached the senior levels of Sinn Féin.
The UUP pulled out of the Executive last month, claiming trust in Sinn Féin has been destroyed. Speaking publicly on his arrest for the first time yesterday, Mr Storey said: ‘ I absolutely reject the attempts of the unionist parties to cynically use these murders and my wrongful detention to threaten these political institutions.’
Police have said current members of the IRA were involved in last month’s shooting of Mr McGuigan in a suspected revenge attack for the murder of former IRA commander Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison in Belfast three months earlier.
The disclosures about the IRA have heaped pressure on Sinn Féin to explain why the supposedly defunct paramilitary organisation is still in existence.
Sinn Féin has insisted that the IRA has gone away and has accused the two unionist parties of contriving a crisis for electoral gain. Mr Storey added: ‘ The behaviour of the unionist parties, who have cynically used my arrest to pull down the political institutions, has been nothing short of disgraceful. They have succeeded only in holding the political process to ransom and providing encouragement to the dissident elements and the criminals who murdered Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan.
‘The people who murdered Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan are criminals and the enemies of the Sinn Féin peace strategy.
‘At no time during my detention did the police present a shred of evidence, a shred of intelligence, which in either my opinion or in the opinion of my legal representatives, warranted my arrest.’
Mr Storey said the IRA has no organisational structure any more.
‘The chief constable and others see this as like the caterpillar that’s still there. Well, I see it as having moved on, it’s become a butterfly, it’s flown away,’ he said.
Mr Flanagan will represent the Government at this morning’s talks. He said he was ‘ confident that we will see a level of improvement this week that brings the parties back from the brink’.
‘The IRA has moved on, it has gone’