Northern Ireland power-sharing deal unlikely in coming days

BELFAST: Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said that Northern Ireland’s political parties were unlikely to reach a deal to restore the province’s power-sharing agreement in the next few days.

The region has been locked in a political crisis since January’s collapse of the coalition between pro-British unionists and Irish nationalists mandated under a 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian violence.

The British government last week said last week it would give the parties a few more days to agree a way to restore the executive after the latest deadline passed without a deal. Britain’s minister for Northern Ireland, James Brokenshire, is due to update parliament today.

“I think it is very unlikely that there will be an agreement by Monday (today),” Adams said in a statement. If power-sharing is not restored, Northern Ireland risks reverting to direct rule from London for the first time in a decade, a step backwards in the delicate balance between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union with Ireland and predominantly Protestant unionists who want to stay in the United Kingdom.

Adams said a deal was still possible but there had been no sense of urgency around getting an agreement with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), now a key ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s minority government.

I think it is very unlikely that there will be an agreement by Monday (today). Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein President

— Reuters photo Adams, and the leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, join demonstrators participating in the ‘March For Marriage,’ demanding equal marriage legislation in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.