'It will take a long time': the deal with Northern Ireland is widely welcomed

Britain, Ireland and the United States on Tuesday welcomed an agreement to end almost two years of political deadlock in Northern Ireland, handing the territory's leadership role for the first time to Sinn Fein, a party that represents mainly Roman Catholic voters committed to a united Ireland.

The breakthrough came early Tuesday morning when the Democratic Unionist Party, whose largely Protestant supporters want to remain in Britain, said it was ready to end a long and crippling boycott of Northern Ireland's political assembly.

“I believe all the conditions are now in place for the return of the meeting,” Chris Heaton-Harris, the British foreign secretary for Northern Ireland, said on Tuesday.

Claire Cronin, the US ambassador to Ireland, said this welcome The news. “The people of Northern Ireland are best served by a power-sharing government at Stormont, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement,” she wrote on social media, adding that President Biden “has long expressed his support for a safe and prosperous Northern Ireland has made clear. .”

Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin said the upcoming recovery of power sharing was “good news” and that he looked forward to working with the assembly in the future.

The deal between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the British government opens the door to a seismic change in the politics of contemporary Northern Ireland, where the Prime Minister has so far always come from the ranks of the DUP

Barring last-minute complications, Sinn Fein, which emerged as the largest party in Northern Ireland's last election, will now appoint the prime minister. The DUP will have to settle for the post of deputy prime minister, a major symbolic change, even though the powers of the holders of those posts are similar.

The unionist party quit the Northern Ireland Assembly in February 2022 in protest at post-Brexit trade arrangements set out in a deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol, which imposed controls on goods coming from mainland Britain.

The restrictions were introduced because Ireland remained in the European Union when the British left. The system avoided checks at the politically sensitive land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland – a border where violence flared during the decades of sectarian strife known as the Troubles, which largely ended after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

But many unionists saw these controls as an insult and feared they would drive a wedge between the territory and the rest of Britain.

In 2023, Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, struck a new deal with the European Union known as the Windsor Framework Agreement, which secured some concessions from Brussels.

But they were insufficient for the DUP, whose continued boycott of Stormont paralyzed decision-making even as civil servants retained basic government functions.

Pressure on the DUP to reach an agreement has steadily increased. Northern Ireland's health service is in crisis and dysfunctional politics is preventing public sector workers from getting the pay rises on offer in the rest of Britain. Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people took part in the largest strike in Northern Ireland in living memory.

The DUP's decision to return to government was announced after a testy internal meeting – part of which was leaked on social media – which lasted more than five hours on Tuesday morning.

Around 1 a.m., Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, told a news conference that his party was ready to return to the meeting and pledged to “work with others to build a thriving Northern Ireland.”

In return, London has promised new measures to ease checks on goods traveling between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, although details will not be made public until Wednesday. In addition, Mr Heaton-Harris said Northern Ireland would receive more than £3 billion in funding.

Mr Donaldson's pledge to restore power-sharing is conditional on the British government fulfilling its side of the deal and quickly introducing legislation, something Mr Heaton-Harris pledged to do in his statement on Tuesday, in which he said : “I can confirm that we will do that. keep this agreement.” However, the details of the deal will be closely watched.

On Tuesday, Mr Donaldson said the outcome of negotiations with London was that there would be “zero checks, zero customs paperwork” on goods moving from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland. “That removes the border within Great Britain between Northern Ireland and Great Britain,” he said.

These words may have been carefully chosen because filling out forms unrelated to customs may be necessary even though “no customs paperwork” is required.

For Mr Donaldson, striking a deal is a political risk and Monday night's internal meeting exposed divisions within the DUP, with some prominent party figures opposing the deal.

Some critics fear the party will be encircled by a tougher party, the Traditional Unionist Voice, which opposes compromise.

Its leader, Jim Allister, said in a social media post on Tuesday that “the DUP, in betrayal of their own solemn commitments, has relented” on Irish Sea trade rules. It appeared that “not a single word has been removed from the union dismantling protocol,” he added.

By contrast, there was an optimistic mood among Sinn Fein, whose president, Mary Lou McDonald, said the breakthrough was “a long time coming, but we are very pleased to be at this crossroads.”

She added that she looked forward to her colleague Michelle O'Neill becoming First Minister of Northern Ireland.

“That will be a moment of great significance,” Ms McDonald said as she stood next to Ms O'Neill in the Great Hall at Stormont on Tuesday, “not just because we haven't had a government for so long, but because it will be the be the first time we will have a Sinn Fein Prime Minister, a nationalist Prime Minister.”