An Assembly sub-committee was yesterday formed to help determine if the standoff between the DUP and Sinn Féin over the timing for the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Executive can be resolved.
The policing devolution deadlock is threatening the British and Irish governments' plan to see devolution fully restored by March 26th next year. But yesterday the Assembly Programme for Government committee established a policing sub-committee to address this and other policing and justice issues.
The committee will involve direct contact between two of the DUP and Sinn Féin politicians central to dealing with policing - Gerry Kelly and Ian Paisley jnr, who are the respective policing and justice spokesmen for Sinn Féin and the DUP, and potential ministers in an Executive department of justice.
Almost on a daily basis senior DUP politicians have been stating that they will not provide Sinn Féin with a policing and justice devolution date - a requirement Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams insists is essential to allow the calling of a party ardfheis on endorsing the PSNI.
The six-member sub-committee will meet on Friday and, it is expected, on a regular basis thereafter until January 3rd, when it will report to the Programme for Government committee.
Its other members are MLAs, Arlene Foster of the DUP, Cathy Stanton of Sinn Féin, Fred Cobain of the Ulster Unionist Party and Alex Attwood of the SDLP.
The governments hope the contact between the DUP and Sinn Féin will allow these parties to move from rhetoric to real engagement.
While the DUP is adamant the onus for movement on policing rests with Sinn Féin, there has been some moderation in DUP language on the issue and Dublin and London hope the gap between the parties at least can be partly-bridged by January 3rd.
SDLP sub-committee member Alex Attwood said while it would be for the overall party leaderships to make final decisions on policing, the committee would permit "a four-party focus on the key policing issues".
"It will be a sub-committee whose work will be pivotal to the restoration of devolved government and it will be operating within a tight timeframe. If the DUP does not move big time on devolution and Sinn Féin does not move big time on the rule of law, then the process will run out of time," he warned.
Mr Attwood said the committee would examine possible models for resolving the standoff between the DUP and Sinn Féin standoff, including whether in the initial years of the Assembly the department of justice would be shared between the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party rather than being in the control of the DUP and Sinn Féin.
Meanwhile, in the Assembly yesterday the DUP, UUP, SDLP and Alliance endorsed a motion warning that the proposal to reduce the number of councils from 26 to seven would damage services and "underpin sectarianism and community division".
A Sinn Féin amendment supporting the creation of seven "super councils" was rejected by the Assembly.
Proposing the motion, SDLP Assembly member Tommy Gallagher said the seven council system would lead to over-centralisation and to the sectarian "Balkanisation" of Northern Ireland.
