It will be at least September before DUP moves on return to Stormont, predicts Michelle O’Neill

Michelle O’Neill has predicted there will be no movement by the DUP on entering the Stormont assembly and forming an executive until September when the prospect of the Northern Ireland Secretary calling a new election starts to loom large.

The North’s First Minister designate, said that the DUP’s refusal to support the nomination of a speaker to the Stormont Assembly until there was decisive action on the Northern Ireland protocol amounted to the party holding society to ransom on the issue.

And while British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss saw her Bill to scrap parts of the protocol passed by 295 votes to 221 in the House of Commons with support from the DUP, Ms O’Neill said she does not expect any movement from the DUP on entering Stormont until at least September.

“The legislation says when we have an election, there is 24 weeks in which to form a government so that brings us into the end of October and I think, if something is going to be done, that’s when it’s going to happen, between September and October and that remains to be seen.

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“But the DUP must get their act together and start to work with everybody else to try to put money in people’s pockets to deal with the cost of living … the DUP’s actions, where they are engaging in this stand off, are serving only to punish the public.”

Speaking during a visit to Fermoy in Co Cork where she returned to the house on Oliver Plunkett Street where she was born when her parents came south in 1977, Ms O’Neill said the DUP was wrong to see the protocol as posing a threat to those in the North who see themselves as British.

“They say the protocol undermines their relationship with Britain, but they are conflating the issue of identity with trade – they keep trying to rubbish the protocol telling people their identity is under threat, but the Good Friday Agreement deals with identity, and nothing is going to change there.

“The madness of the DUP position is this: whatever solution is going to be got in terms of making the protocol work better and that’s a good thing, it will be found between the British government and the European Union, and it will not be found in the Executive in the North.”

Ms O’Neill said that she believed the decision by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to bring a Bill to parliament to scrap the NI protocol was a retrograde step which owed more to internal Tory party politics than any genuine concern for the Belfast Agreement or Irish people.

“I think the approach of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson is reckless - they are breaching international law and damaging their own standing, but they don’t seem to care. They are not acting in the interest of Irish people, they are not acting in the interest of people in the North.

“The majority of people elected in the North in the May elections want the protocol, they see it as necessary, the majority of the business community in the North want the protocol, the Irish Government wants the protocol; everybody, bar the Tories and the DUP, wants the protocol.

“It would be very foolish to trust Boris Johnson because this man is only interested in holding on to power. What’s happening in Britain now has all to do with the Tory leadership contest. Liz Truss wants to be leader and what she is doing with this bill is playing to the right-wing gallery of the ERG.”

Ms O’Neill warned the DUP that if they think the failure to get the Stormont Executive up and running within 24 weeks of last month’s election will lead to a return to direct rule, they should remember that the Belfast Agreement is built on the principle of partnership.

“If the DUP proceed down this route and we eventually come to a point where you can’t have government in the North. For anybody in the DUP or anyone who thinks we then go to direct rule, that’s not going to happen because the Good Friday Agreement is about partnership.

“It is about partnership between the British government and the Irish Government, and the people and we would expect the Irish Government to stand firm in the event of no government in the North and therefore we would have some sort of joint authority.”