Flanagan to lead Govt team at Stormont crisis talks

The Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan will lead the Irish Government delegation at an emergency meeting in Stormont today.

The British and Irish governments want political leaders to review the Stormont House Agreement at the meeting in the hopes of saving Northern Ireland's power sharing institutions.

The fate of the accord, which was hailed as resolving a range of disputes destabilising powersharing in Belfast, was thrown into uncertainty after a bid to introduce welfare reforms fell in the Assembly.

Introducing the last Conservative/Lib Dem government’s reformed benefits system in Northern Ireland, after a two-year delay, was a key plank of the agreement forged at Stormont House in December.

The defeat of the Welfare Reform Bill last week, due to a Sinn Féin/SDLP veto, has now endangered other elements of the deal, such as the devolution of corporation tax powers, a major civil service redundancy scheme and new structures to address the legacy of the Troubles.

But, of more immediate concern, it poses an existential threat to the stumbling five-party Executive, as ministers are now facing a budgetary black hole estimated at over £600m.

That funding gap is in part a consequence of UK Treasury penalties for non-implementation of welfare reforms currently running at just under £10m per month.

Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers and Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan are due to attend the meeting in Belfast.

Democratic Unionist First Minister Peter Robinson will also be present, with the leaders of the other Executive parties, only a week after being admitted to hospital with heart problems.

While initially backing the welfare element of the Stormont House Agreement, Sinn Féin withdrew its support three months later, claiming that Executive-funded top-up schemes to protect claimants losing out under the new benefits system were not as comprehensive as it believed were envisaged in December’s negotiations.

The DUP has accused its main partners in government of welching on the deal.