Northern politicians will have their salaries stopped and the Assembly will be put on hold, if agreement on the establishment of a powersharing Executive is not reached by November 24th, Northern Secretary Peter Hain said in Dublin yesterday.
"We won't be blinking", declared Mr Hain after a meeting with Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in Iveagh House, Dublin, under the auspices of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
Mr Ahern took an equally strong line on the November deadline, saying that the two Governments would, if necessary, focus on increasing cross-Border co-operation over the heads of Northern politicians, if those politicians could not agree to share power.
The Minister refused to be drawn on the details of the Plan B to run the North, which was being held in reserve by the two Governments, saying that all their efforts would be concentrated on getting Plan A to work. Mr Hain said there was no reason for the Northern parties not to engage seriously in an effort to find agreement, following the latest report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, which represented a milestone in the phasing out of IRA activity.
Both ministers also accepted there would have to be moves by Sinn Féin on policing as part of the process of putting an Executive in place. Mr Ahern said there would have to be an understanding that all parties supported the PSNI.
"There is no way in the medium-term or the longer-term that Northern Ireland can have self-government without every party signing up to policing," said Mr Hain, who added that legislation to devolve policing functions to an Executive would be in place well before the November 24th deadline.
The joint communique issued by the two ministers said that during their meeting there had been a substantive and detailed exchange on progress in North/South co-operation across a range of practical issues to promote the development of an all-island economy.
"The two governments have committed to working together to explore ways in which they could more closely co-operate to maximise the potential of the north-west region. The conference approved a new cross-Border north-west gateway initiative to include a non-statutory integrated spatial planning and development framework focusing on the Derry-Letterkenny gateway and the four council areas of Derry, Strabane, Limavady and Donegal."
The communique added that an examination of the potential for joint investment in key infrastructural projects as well as joint action in areas such as trade, investment tourism promotion and skills training would be examined. These studies are scheduled for completion by the autumn.
The development of sustainable energy on an all-island basis was also discussed and a study on how renewable energy technologies could be accommodated in the development of an integrated all-Ireland electricity grid.
Mr Ahern said that they were conscious of the need to move ahead with legislation to underpin an all-Ireland energy market by July, 2007.