Downing Street Says » Northern Ireland

» Monday, January 29, 2007

Northern Ireland

Put to the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) that the DUP had said that they needed to see evidence on the ground on policing, and how much time did that leave the Prime Minister, the PMOS said that what the Prime Minister had said was that people in Northern Ireland would watch to see words being translated into reality. How and when was a matter for Sinn Fein, so people should wait for them to say some more. Everybody equally knew that that the reality was that an executive Government would only be formed on the 26th March if two things happened. One was that the words had been translated into action, and the second was that the DUP committed to power sharing. Everybody knew what the parameters were, so we had to see how things moved forward. What that should not take away from was the genuinely historic significance of yesterday’s event. Anyone familiar with the history of Northern Ireland knew the significance of Republicans saying that they would support the police service in Northern Ireland. The PMOS said that it might seem normal in the rest of the UK; in Northern Ireland it had not been normal for all sections of the public to support the police. It now looked as though it would be, and that spoke for itself.

Asked if the deadline was midnight tonight or midnight Tuesday night, and if the Prime Minister or the Northern Ireland Secretary had not said anything by midnight tonight, did that mean that elections would go ahead, the PMOS said that that was his understanding. The PMOS also reiterated that we had made clear throughout that if at any point we believed that this was not going to result in a power sharing executive in which everyone supported the police, then that was a process which would not automatically carry on. What we wanted to have was elections to a power sharing executive in which everyone supported the police, in action as well as words.

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