The Stormont Executive needs to return to get money into people’s pockets during an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, Michelle O’Neill has said.
Speaking during a visit to Derry, the Sinn Féin vice president also said people in Northern Ireland are having to choose between buying fuel and food.
The devolved powersharing institutions have been dormant for several months after the DUP withdrew support as part of its protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Earlier this week, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris introduced legislation to push back the deadline by which a Northern Ireland Executive must be formed and to cut MLAs’ pay.
Ms O’Neill has repeatedly called for the Assembly and executive to be restored.
She said: “We want to be in the Executive.
“We want to work with the other parties. We want to form an executive today – there shouldn’t be any delay.
“We are living through the worst cost-of-living crisis that any of us have ever seen.
“People are really, really struggling. People are having to make choices between heating their homes or buying food.
“That is an intolerable situation and we find ourselves now, after seven months from when people voted in the election in May and that result has yet to be respected.
“The DUP is still continuing to block the formation of an executive. It is not good enough.
“It is not good enough whenever people need us.
“My determination is to tell people that I’m not giving up.
“I want to build this executive. I want to get money into people’s pockets.”
Ms O’Neill also referred to ongoing uncertainty over winter fuel support payments announced by the Westminster government.
Households in the region are due to be credited with a £400 payment automatically to help with energy costs this winter as part of a UK-wide scheme.
But the Utility Regulator said the payments may not arrive until January.
It is also not clear if the payments in Northern Ireland will be made as one lump sum or in smaller instalments.
Elsewhere in the UK, gas and electricity customers are receiving the payment in the form of six monthly payments of £67.
Discussions involving Stormont officials and the London Government have been ongoing for months about how to deliver the payment in the region.
Northern Ireland has its own market regulator and does not have the energy price cap system operating in Britain.
Had the Stormont Executive been functioning, the payments would have already been made, Sinn Féin said.
Last week, DUP MP Sammy Wilson said senior Whitehall civil servants are “interfering” in Northern Ireland’s politics by withholding the payments as a lever to increase pressure for the return of Stormont.
Ms O’Neill said: “All we can do is keep fighting the fight for the public and trying to get this £400 out into people’s hands as quickly as possible despite the fact that we don’t have an Executive.”
