Murphy: Time for review of deadlock

The British and Irish governments are doing all they can to secure a way through the current deadlock over power-sharing in Northern Ireland, a senior London minister signalled tonight.

Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy said his officials and Irish officials were trying to carve out a way forward for unionists and nationalists to return to devolution.

Unionist and nationalist parties continued to clash today over their failure to agree a power-sharing model which would guarantee ministerial accountability and greater collectivity.

Mr Murphy said: “I think the only thing we can do now as two governments is sit down and see what positive things have come out of the discussions this week.

“There was a growing consensus within the parties of how an executive should work.

“Some of the issues are unresolved and it is down to us to set out proposals which we hope will gather sufficient support.”

Last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern believed that negotiations at Leeds Castle in Kent had resolved the thorny questions of IRA disarmament and the winding down of all paramilitary activity.

However, the talks stumbled over Democratic Unionist and cross-community Alliance Party demands for more ministerial accountability in a future power-sharing executive.

They wanted ministers to have the ability to challenge other cabinet colleagues’ unpopular decisions and they also propose that the Assembly should also be given the power to overturn an unacceptable ministerial action.

Nationalist SDLP and Sinn Féin negotiators, however, claimed their proposals represented a significant rewriting of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

They also criticised DUP and Alliance proposals to change the way ministers are elected in the Assembly and accused them of trying to strangle and limit the amount of cross-border cooperation between a future Stormont Executive and the Irish Government.

The fallout from the suspended talks at Stormont continue today with DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson accusing the nationalist SDLP of advocating a system of power distribution rather than power sharing.

The East Belfast MP said: “They now want the functions of government to be dealt out like cards among the main parties and each have a virtually unfettered power to exercise those functions within their own fiefdom.

“It is anti cross-community. It is allowing a minister from one party to impose his or her will on everyone else – even on controversial, divisive and sensitive issues.

“This is the antithesis of power-sharing. This is minority rule.”

SDLP leader Mark Durkan countered that it was the DUP who were asking them to grant them minority rule, with their mandate overriding everybody else’s.

“No other party in this process has put forward more proposals on improving accountability and efficiency than the SDLP,” the Foyle Assembly member said.

“The DUP never bothered to respond to any of them which shows that either they don’t know how to negotiate or that they just don’t want to.

“The DUP now claim to be advocates of collectivity but they have opposed collective Executive approaches sponsored by the SDLP such as the Executive Programme Funds and the Strategic Investment Board, insisting that ministers and departments should do their own thing on their own.

“The DUP are accusing us of a position that has only been their own.

“We want ministers and the Executive to be more accountable, business to be more effective with more transparency as well as collectivity. What we will not do is concede to the DUP a drive-by VETO against any minister’s legitimate exercise of their Executive authority.”