Downing Street Says » Northern Ireland

» Monday, November 27, 2006

Northern Ireland

Asked if the Prime Minister would be meeting the Taoiseach today, the PMOS said that he was not aware of any plans to do so. As people would expect, we had been in close contact with the Irish Government following events on Friday, and therefore, the PMOS said that he did not think a meeting was necessary.

Asked what would happen next, the PMOS replied that firstly, Ian Paisley had confirmed our interpretation of what had happened in the Assembly. What Ian Paisley had said on Friday afternoon was that as long as Sinn Fein supported the police, then he would take up the position of First Minister in an executive Government. The PMOS said that we would have to move forward to the next stage, which was resolving the question of Sinn Fein and their supporting the police, but also other matters as well. Therefore, we would keep going. Friday was an interesting day in many ways, but the bottom line was that we knew that if we got to the position of setting up a Government, we knew that it had to based on power sharing and support for the police. However, we also knew who, provided the electorate agreed, would be First and Deputy First Ministers. We were in a position to proceed, but we had to address the big issues.

Asked if we were prepared to wait until Sinn Fein decided to have a conference on policing, the PMOS said that the timetable remained as set out. The PMOS said that he was not going to get into guessing when people would hold meetings, as that was up to them. What everybody knew was what the basic requirements were, therefore we should wait and see where we got to.

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