Hain urges parties to strive for devolution

NORTHERN Secretary Peter Hain yesterday challenged unionists and republicans yesterday to put direct rule ministers out of work during 2006.

Mr Hain urged both sides to make a major new push to restore devolution during the next 12 months - or else planned elections to the shelved Stormont regime will be pointless.

He said: “It is essential that there is real political movement in 2006, if the Assembly elections due to be held in 2007 are to have any meaning.”

Three years on from the collapse of the Stormont parliament over allegations of IRA espionage, British government ministers continue to run the various departments.

A new report by ceasefire watchdogs on the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), due out in January, will be critical to hopes of delivering a breakthrough.

Following the IRA’s pledge to end all violence and its decommissioning, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are waiting for a clean bill of health in the next dossier before making a big push to restore devolution.

Mr Ahern has made clear that if the IMC backs up the Provisionals’ claim, he will push for a swift return to power-sharing.

He said: “If the IMC state that that is credible, that it has happened, then it will allow Tony Blair and myself to try again to get the parties to enter into meaningful discussions that will hopefully lead to the restoration of the Northern Assembly and executive and the North-South bodies at some time during 2006, and the earlier the better.”

Mr Hain also emphasised the significance of reaching a settlement.

Those in charge should be chosen by the people of the North, he insisted.

“Every year that passes without a locally accountable Assembly working through a power-sharing Executive, is a year in which the people of Northern Ireland have to live with a democratic deficit that cannot be justified in the United Kingdom of today,” Mr Hain said.

“Big decisions had to be taken in 2005 on education, infrastructure, health and public administration.

“Those decisions had to be taken by direct rule ministers working in the best interests of Northern Ireland and its people.”

And despite Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin being as far apart as ever, Mr Hain set out what both sides should do.

“Unionists need to know that republicans are serious about the commitments given in the Good Friday Agreement that they will work through exclusively lawful means,” he stressed.

“Republicans and nationalists need to know that unionists are serious about the commitments they have given that they will share power on a genuinely equitable basis.”

Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness claimed the onus was on London and Dublin to produce a blueprint for a political settlement.

The Mid Ulster MP said: “Given the enormous events of this year with the IRA’s decision to formally end its armed campaign, there is an expectation among the people of Ireland, that the Irish and British Governments will bring forward a plan in early 2006 to see the restoration of power-sharing institutions in the North.”