Durkan calls for end to power-sharing system

Enforced power-sharing between nationalists and unionists at Stormont should be scrapped, SDLP leader Mark Durkan said tonight.

In a major speech he said the time was approaching when rules introduced to protect nationalists in the North’s government should be removed.

For decades the SDLP said power-sharing was the only way to prevent unfair unionist domination, but now Mr Durkan said a strong Bill of Rights could provide sufficient protection for minorities.

Tonight the party confirmed the new future envisaged by Mr Durkan could see Stormont operate on the same majority voting systems as Westminster or the Dáil.

The SDLP said that in a positive environment the changes could be introduced as early as the next Assembly term in three years time, but may take longer.

Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the Stormont government was set-up under a powersharing arrangement, requiring politicians to designate as unionist, nationalist or other, with ministerial posts shared out under the d’Hondt system.

Tonight Mr Durkan told an audience at New College, Oxford: “I remember, at the time, saying that the system of designation was necessary because of what we were coming from but should not be necessary where we were going.

“I argued that such measures with their arguably sectarian or sectional undertones should be bio-degradable, dissolving in the future as the environment changed.

“Most, if not all of us, had such future adjustments in mind when we wrote the review mechanisms into the Agreement.

“As we move towards a fully sealed and settled process we should be preparing to think about how and when to remove some of the ugly scaffolding needed during the construction of the new edifice.”

The SDLP, traditionally the largest nationalist party in the North, has been overtaken by Sinn Féin.

The current Stormont cabinet is dominated by Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and disputes between the parties have prevented meetings of the Assembly Executive since June.

With the two largest parties divided over issues including devolution of policing and justice powers and education reform, the system of enforced coalition at Stormont has meant that in the absence of agreement, there is gridlock.

The SDLP and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), who also sit on the Executive, have both become firm critics of the dominant parties.

Tonight, Mr Durkan said: “We need to reflect on the dangers of the decision-making protections acting as decision making prevention on more and more important issues.

“The possibilities for political realignment with new or changing party offerings in the future could be stunted by permanent reliance to the present degree on designation.

“If we are serious about a truly shared future then we have to allow for truly shared politics where parties can – and have to – appeal across the traditional divides.”

He added: “Protections of rights, interests and identities will still be needed but not only for, or only as, either unionists or nationalists.”

Mr Durkan said a Bill of Rights, also envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement, could offer new protections.

He told critics of such a Bill: “Maybe they and the rest of us need to start thinking about how a sound Bill of Rights in Northern Ireland might offer more productive and articulate protection for all our rights in a new democratic society than vote-locks and tit-for-tat vetoes in perpetuity.

“’One man-one vote’ was the start of a journey – made longer and harder than it needed to be. ’One side- one vote’ should not be the final destination of that journey.”