Good luck Northern Ireland
After 3 years of no regional government, politicians return to share power
Somewhere in my head, I had lodged that 13th January 2020 was the new deadline for an agreement by the political parties in Northern Ireland to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA). The NIA is a devolved administration in a similar but different way to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.
The Assembly and the mechanisms by which it worked had been thrashed out in the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) 21 years ago. Northern Ireland had experienced a violent civil conflict from the late sixties until the GFA. The conflict has not totally gone away as a small minority continue to perpetuate acts nonetheless the deaths have reduced from 3 figures to single figures. Indeed it was the murder of Lyra McKee on Good Friday last year that gave fresh impetus to those in political leadership to fulfil their responsibilities.
The Assembly had ceased to function for 3 years due to a fall out between Sinn Fein ( Irish Republicans) and the Democratic Unionist Party ( British Unionist). The mechanism agreed to make a power-sharing government work meant that without continued goodwill either side could walk away collapsing the Assembly.
It does seem in the 21 years of its history that it works for a time and then like a couple who start to drift things come to a head and one party walks out. This time it seemed Sinn Fein wanted an Irish Language Act which the DUP wouldn’t give. In came the Relationships Counsellors in the form of the British and Irish governments who took three years to get the couple to agree to go back to bed.
Time does not stand still and in those three years, the DUP went from being the darling of the Westminster Conservative Government to losing a number of seats in the recent United Kingdom General Election. Perhaps it thought it had a better partner in London than at home in Belfast. Sinn Fein although losing no seats depleted its electoral strength. The voters were letting themselves be heard. Workers were also letting themselves be heard as with no government Civil Servants were running the show and pay rises were not happening in parity with the rest of the UK. Health workers have stage strikes since November. On the same day that Nurses were on strike the Conservative government’s representative in NI, Julian Smith was tying the Nurses’ pay rise to the need for the parties to agree prior to 13th January deadline.
Today at Stormont the residence of the Northern Ireland Assembly the elected representatives took their seats and elected First and Deputy First ministers.
As a Northern Irish person living in England, I am glad to see the restoration of the Assembly as I believe it the best way forward for NI as both unionist and nationalist communities level up in terms of numbers. Whether NI remains in the UK or becomes at a future date part of a United Ireland I believe the Assembly will be the vehicle to reflect the uniqueness of what some call the Six counties, others Northern Ireland and all call home.
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