Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said it would be “foolish” not to have the Northern Ireland Assembly up and running for the visit of US President Joe Biden next month.
She said it would be an “incredibly foolish lost opportunity” if Stormont was not restored for the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement next month, and President Biden’s visit.
“Why would you blow that, why would you pass that opportunity by?” she said, speaking on Newstalk’s On The Record programme on Sunday, in an interview recorded earlier this week in the United States during her visit there as part of the St Patrick’s Day festivities.
Ms McDonald said there was a “huge opportunity” to get the Assembly up and running. Speaking before she and the other leaders of the Assembly parties met with President Biden, she said that she would tell him Sinn Féin were “ready, willing and able”, and hoping that the DUP would “embrace” the deal that was struck and “get back to work”.
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She said the parties, the United States, Europe and the British and Irish governments had been “partners in this enterprise for a very, very long time”.
She said the Northern Ireland protocol had been subject to a negotiation which would now be ratified by Westminster. “Really, there is no excuse, if there ever was one, for the DUP not to go back in and not to work the powersharing institutions”.
Asked if devolution was effectively dead, she said she didn’t countenance that. “The reality is, we have to share power... communities in the north of Ireland need, deserve and want government and proper political leadership. There’s no dodging that, that’s just an immutable fact.”
No tweaks
Asked if there was scope to tweak the agreement, she said the negotiation is over and that had been made clear by the EU and by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
She said that political leaders “across all persuasions” would be united on St Patrick’s Day trips as part of what she said was “Team Ireland”, and was an opportunity to speak to influential people about Ireland, north and south.
