Sinn Fein and Alliance on joint authority: DUP and UUP say proposal a serious breach of Good Friday Agreement

The unionist parties were speaking today after the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) called for "calm" in the wake of an assertion by Sinn Fein that joint authority was inevitable if the DUP did not return to the Stormont Executive. The DUP has withdrawn in protest over the NI Protocol.

On Friday Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said: "The only alternative to the executive in Belfast working and powersharing working will be a joint arrangement between the Irish and the British state,” she said. “There should be no doubt on that score.”

In response LCC chairman David Campbell said today that her comments were "inflammatory" and “tantamount to destroying not just our political process but our peace process”.

He added: "The Belfast Agreement determined that the Republic of Ireland would have no part of Strand One issues ie, the internal governance of Northern Ireland."

He has “urgently contacted the main loyalist groupings to appeal for calm and to resist this clear provocation from Sinn Fein” he added.

Ms McDonald was speaking the day after Alliance leader Naomi Long said most people in NI would not accept direct rule. "So, I think we will be talking about a form of direct rule that would involve Irish participation and not just directly from Westminster," she added.

UUP leader Mr Beattie responded that a key reason his party supported the Belfast Agreement was to replace the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave Dublin a consultative role in NI.

He added: "In the section ‘Constitutional Issues’ the Belfast Agreement recognised ‘it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people.’

“Clearly any attempt to impose some form of Joint Authority between London and Dublin on Northern Ireland would run contrary to that and be another very serious breach of the Belfast Agreement."

DUP MLA Deborah Erskine also affirmed that joint authority "would run completely at odds to the Belfast and successor agreements". Urging a focus on "replacing the protocol with arrangements that unionists can support" she added that without devolved ministers the UK will administer direct rule, as happened when Sinn Fein blocked devolution for 1044 days over the Irish language.

Senior politics lecturer at Ulster University, Dr Cillian McGrattan, said Sinn Fein’s assertion "directly contravenes the principle of consent upon which the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was based". He added that Naomi Long's comments point to "no feel for unionist sensibilities and little knowledge of the historic agreement that her party helped to design".

Loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson said Sinn Fein had caused "widespread tension and anger" and that Alliance are “causing a worrying increase in tension”.

In 2017 The UK rebuffed a call for joint authority by Dublin, saying: “We will never countenance any arrangement, such as joint authority, inconsistent with the principle of consent in the [Good Friday/Belfast] agreement.”

It added that it was for the UK alone “to provide the certainty over delivery of public services and good governance in Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom. This is consistent with our obligations under the Belfast agreement”.

Sinn Féin responded that the LCC "might make better use of its time if it focussed on bringing the existence of loyalist paramilitary groups… to an end."

The Alliance Party responded that the role of the Irish Government in local matters “has been a reality since the Anglo-Irish Agreement” and that the form joint authority could take is “open for debate, and neither should it contravene the principle of consent”.