The Northern Secretary emphasised the UK government’s commitment to ensuring people in Northern Ireland will receive help with their energy bills during his first visit on Thursday.
Chris Heaton-Harris said he had spoken to Cabinet colleagues “to ensure we can see support delivered in Northern Ireland as soon as possible”.
The Secretary of State’s trip came as UK prime minister Liz Truss outlined plans to tackle the spiralling cost of energy by freezing the average household bill at no more than £2,500 for the next two years and to provide “equivalent support” for businesses.
It is unclear how this will apply in Northern Ireland, which has a different energy market and lacks an Executive to distribute any additional funds which may be allocated through the so-called “Barnett consequentials” process.
The North’s Minister for Finance, the Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy, called for “urgent clarity” as to how support for energy bills would be delivered in Northern Ireland and said the prime minister’s announcement “does not go far enough.”
The DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said people in Northern Ireland would receive the support despite the absence of the Executive and his party would “work day and night to ensure at Westminster and through our ministers at Stormont that people get the help they need.”
During his visit to Northern Ireland Mr Heaton-Harris met business and community groups in Mid Ulster and held meetings with Sinn Féin and the DUP.
He did not meet the Northern Ireland’s other main parties – Alliance, the UUP and SDLP. This was understood to be down to diary pressures and he intends to meet them in the near future.
In a statement issued following his visit, Mr Heaton-Harris said it had been “brilliant to be out and about in Northern Ireland today, and to talk to people about how we can deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, to make it a better place to live, work and invest”.
Arriving for the meeting with Ms O’Neill, Mr Heaton-Harris told reporters he was “looking forward to delivering enough pressure so we can get the Executive up and running, solve the problems of the protocol and some of the more useful domestic things I can do to help people here in their everyday lives.”
Speaking to journalists after the meeting Ms O’Neill said she had taken the opportunity to “make it pretty clear to him” that her priorities were restoring the Executive and dealing with the cost-of-living crisis and finding a negotiated solution to the issues around the Northern Ireland protocol.
“We made the case very strongly that this situation is no longer tolerable, they need to stop pandering to the DUP; the DUP need to join the rest of us and get around the Executive table and support people.”
She said Mr Heaton-Harris had told her the restoration of the Executive was also his priority but said “time will tell if this is his desire or if there’s a change of tack from this new Tory leadership.”
Speaking to reporters following his own party’s meeting with Mr Heaton-Harris, Mr Donaldson said he believed the new Secretary of the State and his fellow Northern Ireland Office minister Steve Baker “understand the nature of the difficulties we face” regarding the Northern Ireland protocol.
“I’m sure the Secretary of State will share our view that decisive action needs to be taken to address those problems so that the political institutions can be restored here,” he said.
Mr Donaldson said he did “not feel under pressure at all” to re-enter the powersharing government at Stormont “because I am moving forward on the strength of the mandate I was given by the people of Northern Ireland”.
Only when a “solution” to the protocol was “put in place, when people can see that Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom has been respected, then, and only then, will I and my party recognise that it’s time to see the political institutions fully restored,” he said.
Asked about the prospect of renewed UK-EU negotiations, he said this would “require a change of stance by the European Union, that they need to recognise that if we are to arrive at a solution, that requires them to accept and respect the integrity of the United Kingdom, its internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it.”
Additional reporting - PA.
