DUBLIN — The price tag for reviving Northern Ireland’s cross-community government keeps going up – but the U.K. now says £3.3 billion is as good as it will get.
As he announced an inconclusive end to eight months of negotiations with the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said he had just presented a final financial offer to DUP chief Jeffrey Donaldson and the leaders of three other parties entitled to share power in the region’s collapsed government at Stormont.
The major concession from last week’s initial offer of a £2.5 billion rescue package for Stormont is a new commitment from the U.K. Treasury to write off £559 million in existing overspends from the past two years of rudderless governance.
That debt write-off — which the Northern Ireland Office bills as “new money” since it removes potential crippling deductions from upcoming budgets — is conditional on the DUP ending its blockade of power-sharing and crafting its own balanced budget plans with the major party on the Irish nationalist side of the divide, Sinn Féin.
“It is disappointing that there will not be a new executive up and running to take up this offer and deliver for the people of Northern Ireland before Christmas,” Heaton-Harris told journalists at his official Hillsborough Castle residence.
“However this package is on the table and will remain there, available on day one of an incoming Northern Ireland Executive to pick up,” he said. “It is now time for decisions to be made.”
While all the other parties accepted that the U.K. had made a final offer and the time for talking was exhausted, Donaldson insisted his party was still in haggle mode.
In tetchy exchanges with journalists, Donaldson denied his party was internally divided on the offer, which includes U.K. proposals to amend the 2020 U.K. Internal Market Act that laid the groundwork for Britain’s post-Brexit trade rules.
This as-yet-unpublished bill would add assurances that Northern Ireland won’t economically diverge from Britain — even though Downing Street’s Brexit trade agreements with Brussels leave Northern Ireland as the only corner of the U.K. still subject to EU rules on goods.
Donaldson wants a guarantee that, as the U.K. and EU introduce different standards on products and processes, Northern Ireland will stay aligned to British standards set in London, not EU rules enforced by the neighboring Republic of Ireland.
“I know what is in those proposals,” Donaldson said, referring to British legislative proposals on private offer. “I know that we have not yet finalized agreement. And I know that for certain. We will continue to talk and continue to engage until we can finalize agreement on the substantive issues.”
Other leaders accused Donaldson of refusing to accept political reality and unblock a financial injection that would allow Northern Ireland’s public sector workers to receive £584 million in overdue pay raises and to invest more in fixing what is a U.K.-worst backlog of cases in the local health service.
“There isn’t a doubt or a query or a question mark on that fact. That negotiation is over. We are at this decision point. The DUP, it seems, are rowing back from taking that decision,” said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long, who was justice minister in the Stormont coalition that fell apart last year, said Donaldson was in denial.
“This is starting to feel a bit like a bad break-up, where one person has listed themselves on Facebook as single and the other one is still claiming: ‘It’s complicated.’ These talks are over. It could not have been clearer today,” she said.
