Cowen and Murphy challenge politicians over devolution

The British and Irish governments tonight threw down the gauntlet to Northern Ireland’s politicians to prove they have the “political will” to restore devolution.

After a meeting of the British and Irish inter-governmental conference in Dublin, Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy and Foreign Minister Brian Cowen insisted they wanted to create the right political climate for Assembly elections soon.

But they insisted it was up to the Northern Ireland parties to prove they were willing to take the steps needed for stable devolved government.

After the meeting Mr Cowen said: “It is a question really of political will.

“It is not a question of a chicken and egg situation.

“There must be sufficient political will to satisfy the vast majority of the people on the island of Ireland that paramilitarism has come to an end, that it will stay ended and people are committed to exclusively peaceful means.

“If it is the case that there are commitments to that effect and efforts to persuade others to that effect it will ensure that we don’t have a stop-start Executive.

“There is a responsibility on all political leaderships to make the necessary contribution which they can make.”

Mr Cowen was commenting after nationalists again urged the British government to set a date in the autumn for Assembly elections in a bid to help efforts to restore the Assembly and power-sharing Executive.

Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness warned today that if there were no elections this year it could spell the end for the Good Friday Agreement.

Nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan also insisted that the British government should set an election date and go ahead with the poll regardless of whether political progress was achieved.

However Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy tonight said it was essential that people in the province had the promise of a stable government.

He declared: “The reason why it is that the Assembly was suspended in the first place has not gone away and we have to deal with all of those difficult issues too.

“There is not an awful lot of point in the long run if you have an Assembly election and that (the Assembly) again has to be suspended for how many weeks or months?

“I don’t think that that is going to happen. I think that people in Northern Ireland, the political parties actually understand how important it is to build the trust between each other so that they can establish devolved government.”