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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has urged Northern Ireland’s newly restored executive to focus on resolving the “day-to-day things that matter to people” rather than the future question of Irish reunification.
Sunak met political leaders on Monday at Stormont, where the executive was revived on Saturday after his government clinched a deal last week with the region’s biggest pro-UK Democratic Unionist party to end its two-year boycott of the power-sharing process.
The executive’s return, led for the first time by a nationalist first minister from the pro-Irish unity Sinn Féin party, Michelle O’Neill, means London is ready to unlock a promised £3.3bn financial package for the region.
“Our new deal gives them more funding and more powers than they have ever had, so they can deliver for families and businesses,” Sunak said. “And that’s what everyone’s priority is now. It is not constitutional change, it is delivering on the day-to-day things that matter to people.”
O’Neill said at the weekend that the executive’s return heralded a “decade of opportunity” in which a reunification referendum should be held.
However on Monday all parties stressed they would focus on fixing the region’s urgent social and funding problems. Northern Ireland has the longest health service waiting lists in the UK as well as funding crises in education, policing and childcare.
The new executive, which is also headed by the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy first minister, dismissed the £3.3bn package as insufficient and offering only a “short-term solution”.
“If we’re going to be successful politically we also need to have the resources to deliver good public services,” O’Neill told reporters. “The prime minister heard that very loudly and clearly.”
Nevertheless, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said on Monday it was “now clear to us that the money is available to settle pay claims”.
Sunak, who also met community leaders and visited a school, called the package “significant and generous”.
The government has made clear it expects Northern Ireland to raise more revenue locally and to enact significant reforms. That could put Sinn Féin, which holds both the finance and economy portfolios, in an unpopular spot.
Sinn Féin also used a meeting of its senior leadership with Sunak at Stormont to criticise London’s attitude to the prospect of a referendum on reunification and its decision not to prioritise the “all-island” economy.
O’Neill and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald criticised “obnoxious” language in last week’s deal with the Democratic Unionist party to end its two-year boycott of Stormont, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. Sinn Féin declined to comment.
Sunak’s two-day trip to Belfast was supposed to have been a victory lap for the UK prime minister, who last year clinched a deal with Brussels to ease Brexit trade problems. His team then worked for months to persuade the DUP to rejoin the executive, buoyed by the promised £3.3bn in funding.
The DUP agreed to return to Stormont after Westminster passed legislation to assuage its Brexit concerns — including buttressing Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.
Sunak will now hope to be able to leave Northern Ireland’s concerns behind him as he looks ahead to a UK general election expected later this year.
But bilateral relations with Ireland have been strained by the UK’s Legacy Act, intended to scrap inquests into the Troubles and to grant amnesties.
The Irish government has filed a suit against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights and all parties in the region oppose the legislation.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who was also at Stormont on Monday, said he did not discuss the issue with Sunak.
