EFFORTS to restore devolution are expected to top the agenda when Micheál Martin today meets the leaders of Stormont's main parties.
The taoiseach's arrives in Belfast just three days after Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney made the trip north.
The DUP did not meet the Fine Gael deputy leader on Friday, citing a diary clash, but party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has confirmed he will meet his Fianna Fáil counterpart today.
There are just 12 days to the October 28 deadline for restoring the Stormont executive before legislation compels Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris to call an assembly election.
The DUP is refusing to nominate a deputy first minister, paving the way for the establishment of an executive, due to its concerns over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The UK government and EU have resumed talks aimed at breaking the impasse but they are not expected to conclude before next Friday's deadline.
The recent turmoil in Downing Street, which saw Prime Minister Liz Truss sack her chancellor on Friday, is also likely to impact on the prospects of an early resolution to the issues around the protocol.
Mr Martin's office said he would meet the each of the leaders of the five main parties to "discuss key political issues".
He is also expected to meet those involved in of cross-community programmes "working with schools as catalysts for peace and reconciliation".
In a statement issued ahead of today's meeting with the taoiseach, Sir Jeffrey said the protocol needed to be replaced "by arrangements that unionists can support".
He stressed again that no unionist MLAs supported the post-Brexit trading arrangements and that it was necessary to "restore cross-community consensus".
"Brussels must loosen the guide ropes for their negotiating team so a proper renegotiation can take place," he said.
"The persistent refusal to change their negotiating mandate has been an impediment over the last two years to securing an outcome that unionists can support."
The DUP leader claimed businesses and consumers were reporting "further problems" with the protocol each week.
"A 25 per cent tariff on steel, driving up transport costs by almost 30 per cent and uncertainty over medicine and veterinary supplies," he said.
"The checks, however, on the Irish Sea border are but a symptom of the problem – they are the product of Northern Ireland being subject to a different set of laws imposed upon us by a foreign entity without any say or vote by any locally elected representative."
He said that if in future Britain moves in a "different direction on aid or taxation" then the north would face "further new barriers".
"If we can secure a better way forward, then there is a great prize of stable devolved government but without decisive action in Dublin and Brussels then the protocol will continue to erode the foundations of Stormont," he said.
"Devolution requires the support of unionists as well as nationalists if it is to function and succeed."
