An agreement on the timetable for transferring powers over policing from Westminster to the Northern Ireland Assembly must be in place before Sinn Féin will hold a special ardfheis to drop the party's opposition to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin has said.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will receive a report in coming days on party grassroots opinion towards the St Andrews proposals presented by the Irish and British governments in Scotland last month.
Three senior party members, Kerry North TD Martin Ferris, MEP Mary Lou McDonald and Newry-Armagh MP Conor Murphy, were directed two weeks ago to hold consultations with members.
Up to 60 meetings have been held since and a small number remains outstanding, Mr Adams said yesterday following a meeting at Government Buildings in Dublin with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern.
The consultation will not offer a final judgment on whether the party's grassroots are prepared to agree that Sinn Féin should offer support "for law and order [ that will] include endorsing fully the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the criminal justice system, actively encouraging everyone in the community to co-operate fully with the PSNI in tackling crime in all areas and actively supporting all the policing and criminal justice institutions, including the policing board", as outlined in the St Andrews proposals.
Sinn Féin said last night that Mr Adams was "not in a position" to propose holding a special ardfheis on policing to the ardchomhairle until a date for the devolution of policing powers to Stormont was agreed, and until the British government enacts other policing legislation after November 16th.
In addition, an agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party over the way in which government departments in Northern Ireland will operate subsequently will also be necessary, a Sinn Féin spokeswoman told The Irish Times.
A two-thirds majority of the 54-strong ardchomhairle will be needed to call a special ardfheis, though a simple majority only of ardfheis delegates will then be needed to change party policy.
After the Government Buildings meeting, Mr Adams said it had been a "very focused", but he warned that the timeframe laid down by the Taoiseach and British prime minister Tony Blair at St Andrews had "slipped".
Questioned about the DUP's demand that Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness should swear a pledge of office if he was nominated as Deputy First Minister on November 24th, Mr Adams told journalists: "There was no mention about any necessity about a pledge of office in the St Andrews Agreement before the Executive comes into place, and the timeframe for that is March next year.
"The governments need to stick by their own agreement. There has been a setback and the setback is that the timeframe has already slipped. We were making it very clear to the Taoiseach, and he was at one with us on this, is that the timeframe cannot be allowed to slip further," Mr Adams continued.
"Our concern is that while the DUP fight out their little sham fight [ about the pledge of office] that the timeframe set out by the two governments is slipping and it cannot be allowed to slip."
Meetings of the Stormont Assembly's programme for government committee must take place, Mr Adams said.
"The committee was to meet Tuesday fortnight ago and has not met. The British actually cancelled it. That meeting should be called as quickly as possible. It isn't because we are being bloody-minded, or that we don't want to give the DUP space. It is what it says it is: a programme for government meeting."
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach said that the British chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown had delivered on the "peace dividend" demanded by all Northern parties.
"One of the issues on which we had total agreement was a peace dividend. Now we have that," he told journalists in Dublin Castle.
He said he would be meeting SDLP leader Mark Durkan "shortly", while "lengthy meetings" were taking place on the issue every day at ministerial and official level.
