Sinn Fein attempt to restore assembly fails: DUP brands move 'cynically orchestrated stunt' while UK internal market remains broken

The party's MLA Gordon Lyons was speaking after Sinn Fein triggered a recall of the Stormont Assembly, a day before thousands of public sector workers strike in Northern Ireland.

However, Mr Lyons said the recall was a “cynically orchestrated stunt” and so his party refused to back the nomination of a new speaker during votes, as it had done in previous attempts to restore the assembly.

A new speaker must be elected in order to appoint a first and deputy first minister and thereby restore the assembly.

The DUP is boycotting devolved government until unionist concerns over post-Brexit trading arrangements – defined by the NI Protocol – are tackled by the UK Government.

Mr Lyons said: “This recall is much like the five others that came before it. It is a stunt. It has been cynically orchestrated to coincide with the industrial action scheduled across our public sector.

“This has been done in an attempt to make the public believe that the restoration of the assembly today will lead to the cancellation of the strikes tomorrow."

Mr Lyons said the barrier to public sector pay increases was not the lack of a Stormont executive, but lack of finance, noting that the Department of Finance progressed a range of decisions on public sector pay last year.

However he added that each decision had to be affordable under the budget imposed by the Secretary of State and that "the cake simply isn’t big enough".

He also added that the £3bn on offer from the government to a restored assembly would not be on offer without the DUP boycott. But he added that in addition to a stable financial foundation, NI also needs a stable political foundation.

"And the arrangements from the Northern Ireland Protocol damage the basis on which power sharing works and has prevented the formation of an executive,” he said.

"Our goal throughout this process has been to restore Northern Ireland's place within the UK internal market as set out in our manifesto."

UUP MLA Robbie Butler said the DUP would be to blame for the impact of the strikes. “If I was a betting man, I would wager that most of the people to my right haven’t even seen the deal that is on offer (from the UK Government).

“In my opinion, the blockage lies with a small number of DUP MPs and Lords who are far removed from the impact on public services and lives here in Northern Ireland.”

TUV leader Jim Allister said the recall “reeks of insincerity”. There is "a studious avoidance of asking the question why these institutions have failed... they have failed fundamentally and unavoidably because of the (Northern Ireland) Protocol."

Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill said the main reason the DUP do not return to Stormont is because they refuse to accept a nationalist as first minister. If the executive could not be restored then a British-Irish partnership that provides “joint stewardship and an intensified role for the Irish government” in Northern Ireland must be considered, she added.

Ms O’Neill said: “The hardship and suffering, the bread-and-butter issues for workers, families, households and businesses is what counts and it’s what the DUP refuse to prioritise. The only remaining explanation for the DUP boycott is the refusal to accept a nationalist first minister."

Alliance leader Naomi Long said Stormont must be reformed so no single party can collapse the powersharing institutions in future. She said: “I want the institutions restored as soon as possible, but more, I want them reformed so that no single party can ever again hold these institutions and, with them the best interests and future of our people, to ransom."

The SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole told the Assembly public sector workers were entitled to a pay rise.

He added: “This chamber and these institutions only matter to the extent that they serve the public. They aren’t serving anyone at the minute other than the narrow self-interest and self-obsession of a few hardline, usually online voices.”