Sinn Fein minister appeals over power sharing

Sinn Fein Minister Bairbre de Brun today appealed to Ulster Unionist cabinet colleagues in the beleaguered Stormont Executive not to pull down the power-sharing institutions.

As Ulster Unionist ministers warned of grave consequences for the power-sharing government over allegations that republicans infiltrated the Northern Ireland office, Ms de Brun accused police of engaging in “theatre” to blacken the name of republicans.

While republicans staged protests in six locations across Northern Ireland over the arrests of four people including a Sinn Fein official at Stormont, the Northern Ireland Health Minister said her party wanted to work with unionists to improve society.

Insisting yesterday’s high profile raid of the Sinn Fein offices at Stormont was a stunt by police, the West Belfast MLA said: “I think the Executive needs to survive this.

“I can’t personally, single-handedly make it survive but I have to say to everybody else who is involved I am totally and utterly committed as is my party to this peace process.

“We are committed to forward movement, to working with others and to working with everybody – former opponents, former opponents that a lot of people would not have expected us to be willing to work with.”

Ms de Brun was speaking outside Andersonstown Police Station in West Belfast, where Sinn Fein staged a picket involving around 70 people including the Belfast Lord Mayor Alex Maskey.