Irish PM seeks to restore Northern Ireland power-sharing within months

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar committed on Sunday to step up work with his British colleague Rishi Sunak to restore power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, hoping to overcome the gridlock in the coming months.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has stated it would not end its year-long boycott of the devolved assembly in protest over post-Brexit trade restrictions unless the United Kingdom and the European Union make further revisions to an agreement made in February to reduce trade obstacles.

London has said that it would not renegotiate any component of the new accord.

“We put a significant lot of work in the past several months into securing an agreement on adjustments and improvements to the protocol,” Varadkar said RTE, referring to the border checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, which have enraged many pro-British unionists.

“The next step is extensive engagement with the British government as well as the five Northern Irish parties to try to get the institutions back up and running, and I’ll definitely be extending my contacts with Prime Minister Sunak in the coming weeks.”

Varadkar said he will strive to restore the required power-sharing government “in the coming months,” adding that local council elections in May and the annual marching season in July, which typically increases sectarian tensions, might make a deal more difficult in the near term.

Despite surveys showing that most Northern Irish people approve the amended Brexit agreement, the DUP has said that its worries about the ongoing role of EU law and Northern Ireland’s participation in the UK’s internal market must be addressed.

The latest postponement of the assembly casts a pall over Monday’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. On Tuesday, US President Joseph Biden will go to Northern Ireland to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty that ended three decades of war.

Power-sharing has failed many times since its adoption as part of the peace agreement, each time being restored following lengthy political discussions. The most recent lasted from 2017 until 2020.