Sinn Fein ends its silence on rule change to stop any party from collapsing Stormont - and hints at possible support for reform

It echoed similar remarks a week earlier by Michelle O’Neill, but comes after the party has been repeatedly criticised for being silent about it – which critics have widely interpreted as opposition.

Sinn Fein kept Stormont in abeyance from 2017 to 2020, and in 2022 the DUP brought down the executive. During an interview on BBC Radio Ulster yesterday, Mr Murphy was pressed on Northern Ireland’s requirement for mandatory power-sharing in order to form a government, which both his own party and the DUP have recently exploited to keep the assembly in a state of collapse for five of the last eight years.

Mr Murphy said that the party is “quite happy ... to look at the arrangements to try and prevent that [collapse] happening again”.

He added: “We said all along that the place to resolve the issue where a party could bring down the executive was within a functioning assembly, that's where it needed to be resolved.

"There is an assembly committee set aside to do this. We're quite content for those issues to be brought there and to try and secure the agreements that are necessary to change the arrangements in the Good Friday Agreement.”

Last year Sinn Féin’s then Stormont leader, now first minster, Michelle O'Neill declined to give evidence to an NI Affairs Committee's inquiry into ways to make assembly collapse less likely. Two DUP MPs on the committee voted against the report.

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry MP said: "Reform of the institutions whilst respecting the principles and structures of the Good Friday Agreement was always envisaged. It is in the interests of everyone to see fair, stable and effective governance.”

He said "Sinn Féin are not recognising this imperative” and called the DUP position “self-serving and cynical”.

Last week the SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole wrote to the DUP and Sinn Fein asking them to commit not to collapse Stormont again.

The party has in the past voiced opposition to scrapping one aspect of power-sharing that was seen as a safeguard for minorities – the petition of concern. This allows laws to be blocked at Stormont even if a majority of MLAs are in favour of it, by forcing a vote to secure “cross-community” support on any given law.

Asked about this in 2017 by the Irish News, Ms O’Neill was quoted as saying “you have to maintain the protections... we won't support anything that does away with the petition of concern”.

Last week, Ms O’Neill said: “Now that we’ve got the executive up and running, all of our energy and effort needs to be on making it work and ensure that it never does collapse again. Now there’s a forum for us to have a conversation… and that’s the assembly and executive review committee.”