Dining room diplomacy puts devolution back on menu

The North's politicians found their appetite for devolved government again today.

Assembly members and their staff may have been disappointed that they were unable to access their dining room offering such gourmet delights as pan-fried monkfish with pancetta and pea risotto and grilled fillet of beef with celeriac roast, spinach and wild mushroom gratin.

But many were more than happy to swallow the previously unthinkable image of the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting beside each other, having concluded a deal which will see power-sharing in six weeks.

Over the weekend it had been clear that an historic deal was cooking at Stormont after the DUP insisted it had the ingredients for a return to government.

Mr Paisley’s party warned that if Assembly members followed Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain's recipe for devolution, they would end up with a half-baked deal.

The scent of devolved government was in the air as Assembly members waited for confirmation that the first ever face-to-face meeting between the DUP and Sinn Féin would take place.

And when the delegations from both parties filed into the members’ dining room for an hour-long meeting, most people knew that devolution was on the menu.

Sources inside the dining room said both the DUP’s and Sinn Féin’s delegation were businesslike as they set about discussing the plan to form a government on May 8.

Mr Paisley and his deputy Peter Robinson, along with Mr Adams, Martin McGuinness and Sinn Fein's Dublin MEP and party chairwoman Mary Lou McDonald outlined the challenges over the next six weeks for the Assembly parties, focusing on the need for a strong economic package from the Irish and British governments to bolster the new executive.

As they set about their agenda, which also focused on the need for preparatory meetings for the new government and calls on the British government to postpone plans to introduce water charges on April 1, portraits of the former Assembly speaker Lord Alderdice and ex-SDLP deputy first minister Seamus Mallon looked down on the proceedings.

Sources said there was mild laughter when Mr Robinson, looking at the list of challenges facing a new power-sharing government, said: “Thank God we aren’t going into government today.”

Downstairs in the marble Great Hall, other parties’ Assembly members and officials mingled with reporters eager to pick up any crumb of information from the dining room.

The DUP delegation, a party spokesman confirmed, was 11-strong.

It consisted of Mr Paisley, Mr Robinson, MPs Nigel Dodds and Gregory Campbell at the top table, with Jeffrey Donaldson, Ian Paisley Junior, Iris Robinson, Sammy Wilson, Arlene Foster, Jimmy Spratt and Willie Hay also present.

Sinn Féin’s top table consisted of Mr Adams, Mary Lou McDonald, Mr McGuinness and Caitriona Ruane, with John O’Dowd, Pat Doherty, Bairbre de Brun, Gerry Kelly and Michelle Gildernew also there.

Initially Sinn Féin press personnel said they had 11 on their squad, prompting quips about football formations.

Noting the shape of the table, one reporter asked whether both parties were adopting a diamond formation – prompting other football anoraks to hope that Sinn Féin and the DUP were not intent on a Christmas-tree formation.

When the meeting was concluded, there was no sense that either side was having to swallow humble pie as they detailed their vision of how power sharing would be restored on May 8.

Everyone at Stormont admitted to having to pinch themselves as the DUP and Sinn Féin leaderships posed together for photographs.

There was a brief moment of panic when Mr Adams disappeared for a few minutes at the end of the meeting before the statements which he and Mr Paisley were about to make. The parties were reassured quickly that he had not stormed out of the meeting and that it was simply a call of nature.

The DUP and Sinn Féin’s devolution recipe will see Mr Paisley and Mr McGuinness meet as de facto first and deputy first ministers over the six weeks – an amazing turn of events.

For many unionists, Mr McGuinness, a self-confessed former member of the IRA, was the bete noire of republicanism.

For many nationalists, Mr Paisley was an uncompromising critic of the Catholic church, republicans and the Irish government who would never share power.

Today’s meeting gave people in the North a flavour of what devolved government could be like with both men at the helm.