SINN Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has called extending the political deadlock at Stormont into next year “unthinkable”.
It follows comments this week by the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who said that while the government was “moving closer” to addressing his party’s concerns over post-Brexit trade, he could not say a break through was likely before the end of the year.
Ms McDonald said the public’s patience had now “worn out” and the DUP’s boycott of Stormont had now “run out of road”.
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“People have been patient, that patience has now worn out, it has run out,” she said.
“The idea that we would move from 2023 into 2024 and still not have an executive and an Assembly up and running is, for us, unthinkable.
“That’s not an acceptable position. So let us say this – we have to advance in a way that is optimistic, that is grounded in the realities of people’s lives, and I am conscious that there are communities now who have been suffering the aftermath of flooding, who are working in a desperate situation, and I don’t think it’s acceptable for those families, those communities, to hear anybody say ‘Well, we’re not going to have government’.”
Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Michelle O’Neill also raised the problems caused by severe flooding this week, and that “messing around” by the DUP was complicating efforts to roll out support payments.
“I think if you ask the people in Downpatrick or you ask the people in Newry who are dealing with the aftermath of the flooding situation, and no executive being in place to be able to help them to get through this time, it’s not good enough, not good enough for those people who need all the political parties working together, facing out to help them right now,” she said.
The Ulster Unionist deputy leader Robbie Butler also said that voters had grown tired of the DUP’s “negative modality of unionism”.
He also said that mirroring Sinn Féin’s Stormont boycott between 2017 and 2020 was not an acceptable strategy.
“The ongoing abstention from Stormont in a wider context is not only harming prosperity, opportunity and wellbeing but expediting a negative modality of unionism that some seem intent in promoting,” he said.
Earlier this week, the Alliance MLA Andrew Muir called on the DUP “to stop using people as bargaining chips” and said a cycle of “ransom politics” had to end.
“We need local ministers in office with access to the tools needed, empowered with a financial package and held to account by locally elected MLAs,” he said.
“There is absolutely no reason Stormont should not be restored tomorrow and on a reformed basis to ensure proper sustainability, ending the cycle of crisis and collapse to give us the stable government necessary for undertaking the transformation of public services needed. We need to end ransom politics for good, where no one party can block restoration of devolution.”
