Opinion

Alex Kane: Yes, the DUP and Sinn Féin can cut a deal but then what?

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Stormont has been without an Executive since January, when Sinn Fein’s former northern leader Martin McGuinness resigned over the botched RHI scheme. Picture by Mal McCann
Stormont has been without an Executive since January, when Sinn Fein’s former northern leader Martin McGuinness resigned over the botched RHI scheme. Picture by Mal McCann Stormont has been without an Executive since January, when Sinn Fein’s former northern leader Martin McGuinness resigned over the botched RHI scheme. Picture by Mal McCann

We're just three weeks away from the assembly having been mothballed for a year; within sight of that tipping point moment when a majority conclude that they can actually live without it.

Apart from the usual nonsense from the usual suspects - that self-congratulating cabal of cheerleaders for the NIO - there's hardly been a squeak of support for the return of the assembly. No rallies at the gates of Stormont. No social media petitions. No new vehicle packed with a post-Good Friday Agreement generation demanding something better. Just a year of people shrugging their shoulders and muttering, "Sure, what would you expect from that lot up there?"

There's never been any particular fondness for the assembly, in the first place. It's not like it created a land flowing with milk and honey, in which difficult decisions were taken and problems created by rising hospital waiting lists and falling school rolls were tackled. In September 2014, after six years as first minister, Peter Robinson concluded: "The arrangements for devolved government at Stormont are no longer fit for purpose and the weight of the issues to be resolved is such that it must be tackled in a St Andrews 2 setting with government involvement." Martin McGuinness - who hadn't been told before hand what Robinson was to say - responded: "Megaphone or media-based negotiations are counter-productive. We all have a responsibility to work together, but in the first place the first minister should talk to me and to his executive colleagues."

Isn't it odd, though - given how important it has become in the last few months - that McGuinness didn't mention St Andrews in his response to Robinson? Surely that would have been the moment to raise Sinn Féin's concerns about the DUP's supposed failure to implement the original St Andrews Agreement? Two years later, when McGuinness signed-off a joint article with Arlene Foster, why didn't he think it was necessary to raise the issue of non-implementation of St Andrews and other agreements; and why didn't Foster pick up on Robinson's "not fit for purpose" concerns? This tendency to skirt around big-ticket problems (while attacking journalists and columnists for pointing them out) ensured an assembly/executive dogged by serial crises, stand-offs and slap-dash repairs. Total collapse was, as some of us have been writing for years, inevitable.

What the RHI saga highlighted was the very worrying discovery that the civil service/advisory side of the governing arrangements wasn't much better than the political side. Listening to the evidence from the inquiry is a bit like listening to a series of blind and deaf Laurel and Hardy tribute acts. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that we have an entire generation of politicians and civil servants who have very little hands-on experience of devolved, locally accountable government, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Robinson's criticisms of the arrangements apply just as much to the civil servants as the politicians. Heaven alone knows how other departments are reaching decisions; or how many other problems are piling up around us.

Meanwhile, the DUP and Irish government are having a spat. Actually, it's not really a spat at all; just a good, old-fashioned phoney war. But at some point, fairly soon I suspect, both sides know that they need to sit down and talk. Writing in the Irish News a few weeks after the UK's vote to leave the EU, I argued that when everyone is surprised by an outcome (as Dublin, London, Belfast and Brussels were) then it's vital to talk quickly and civilly to ensure the best collective solution. I'm not quite sure why the DUP and Irish government have opted for what is, to all intents and purposes, the playground approach to a problem. Maybe it's something to do with bragging rights: although since Varadkar has 26 governments behind him, while the DUP has just one (with a prime minister standing on jelly), I'm not sure the DUP has much to gain by giving Sammy and Ian Jnr free rein to put the boot into Coveney and Varadkar.

Yet, as I say, they need to talk to each other. Stability in Northern Ireland is clearly helped by a benign relationship with the Irish government and that relationship is even more important against the ever shifting dynamics of the Brexit debate. In other words, now is not the time for either side to be making an enemy of the other. So I'm pretty sure we'll see some rowing back over the next few weeks.

Final question of 2017: will the executive be rebooted? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I can foresee the circumstances in which the DUP and Sinn Féin can cut a deal. That is also the bad news. Happy new year.