Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin cut a relaxed figure as he sat on a garden bench in the pretty Chapel Quad at University of Oxford’s Pembroke College on Saturday.
Yet his breezy demeanour contrasted with the sense of “urgency” he said he had conveyed minutes earlier to the British government in a meeting about the failure to restore the powersharing executive at Stormont, which collapsed last year due to the DUP boycotting the Assembly over post-Brexit concerns.
With no sign that the DUP can be tempted back in, Martin suggested the Government is growing “impatient” with unionist foot-dragging. The British insist a deal can still be done in coming weeks, but Irish officials are pessimistic. “The British are glass half-full, we are glass half-empty,” said one.
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Martin, meanwhile, told his British counterparts that the two governments must now start looking at alternatives for the North if the DUP insists on holding out indefinitely. Unionists have been given enough “time and space”, he suggested, but there comes a time for action.
“We’re coming to that time now. We’ve been given different timelines [before]. There is now concern about the drift. We made it clear [to Britain] that the time for resolution of this is urgent,” the Tánaiste told The Irish Times.
Martin used the Oxford gathering of the British Irish Association, an independent body promoting good relations, to meet Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris on Saturday. He also took the opportunity to signal a hardening of the Government’s stance towards the DUP, with a thinly veiled warning to unionists that the State may seek greater influence in Northern Ireland’s affairs if it continues to flounder without a devolved government.
Martin suggested that the Government may look to “creatively” use the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC), an Anglo-Irish talking shop established under the Belfast Agreement, to seek greater influence over issues such as the governance of health and education in the North.
In short, if the DUP still refuses to share power with Sinn Féin to address the North’s pressing social issues, the Dublin and London governments must work more closely to make sure that people in the North are not left behind.
“Our clear message is this,” Martin said. “We are co-guarantors of the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement. It is an internationally binding treaty. Ireland has an interest in protecting it in all its aspects. Strand 1 [the North’s government] is not operating. That affects Strand 2 [North-South bodies], which are on life support. That only leaves Strand 3 [relations between the British and Irish governments].”
Sources in the UK government indicated that joint authority between the British and Irish governments over the North’s affairs is not provided for in the Belfast Agreement. Martin acknowledged this.
“Clearly it has to be within the legal parameters of the agreement. I’m clear on what is possible and what is not possible,” he said. “But if the restoration of the executive doesn’t happen, then you are into what happens next.”
He suggested the British may want to call further elections. But the other option being suggested by the Irish Government is to use the BIIGC to pool “know-how” from Dublin and London to find solutions for issues such as deprivation and health and education outcomes.
“In the absence of an executive, we do have to be creative to move things forward,” he said.
But wouldn’t using the BIIGC to leverage greater influence by the Republic in the North be seen as inflammatory by unionists?
“Joint authority is not provided for in the [Belfast] agreement. But it does give both governments as co-guarantors a responsibility to protect the overall agreement in all its strands. That’s the point I’m making,” said Martin.
While it may be a barely concealed warning to unionists that the Government may stick its oar in, it could also be seen as a bluff. Relations between the Irish and British governments, while much improved recently, seem far from being close enough for the co-operation needed to address the North’s social ills through the BIIGC.
Martin acknowledged that the UK-Ireland relationship is nowhere near as close as it was in the days immediately before and after the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement.
“It’s not the same. Life moves on and evolves,” he said. “From post-David Cameron on, the dynamic changed. Even if you go back further to 2012, after the devolution of justice [to Stormont], both governments stood back [from co-operation on the North]. In retrospect that was probably a mistake.”
But relations have improved “markedly” in recent times, he said, while insisting that the two governments still “must do better”.
Martin said he last spoke to DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson in late July. “He has always been consistent to me that he wants the Executive up and running. I accept the bona fides of his statement.”
He said current talks between the DUP and the British government must “bear fruit within a short time”.
“I wouldn’t be despondent about it. There is always hope. [But] we are impatient with the lack of activity.”
Separately, the Tánaiste insisted he would not, as occasionally rumoured, take up a European Union job and quit domestic politics.
“I am going to lead Fianna Fáil into the next general election,” he said, adding that he wants the current Coalition to go “full term” into the spring of 2025.
“It takes out all the speculation and allows for solid decision-making. We’re coming into a budget. I think we should do another budget next year and make sure that is clear to everybody. That creates a political landscape that allows for decisions to be taken and doesn’t allow for short-term thinking,” he said.
Martin heads to the Middle East on Monday to visit Israel, Palestine and Jordan. But as long as Stormont remains in abeyance, his biggest problems remain closer to home.
