Northern Ireland government to reconvene after two-year DUP boycott | Northern Irish politics

Northern Ireland’s devolved government is to reconvene on Saturday after a two-year boycott, with Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill making history as the first nationalist first minister.

Assembly members (AMs) are to gather at Parliament Buildings at Stormont at 1pm to restore power-sharing institutions that collapsed exactly two years ago.

The members will elect a speaker and nominate ministers to an executive, ending an impasse that has paralysed politics and left Northern Ireland run by civil servants on a form of governmental auto-pilot.

The Democratic Unionist party (DUP) walked out of Stormont on 3 February 2022 in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements that it said undermined the region’s place in the UK. The party agreed to end the boycott this week after its leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, wrung concession from the UK government that smoothed the so-called Irish Sea border.

After a meeting of party leaders on Friday, Donaldson said: “We are looking forward to the assembly meeting, going through the formalities, getting devolution restored.”

There were calls on social media for loyalist protesters to picket the Stormont estate, outside Belfast, to protest against the DUP’s deal with London, which was described as a sellout.

O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, will become first minister in accordance with a May 2022 assembly election in which the republican party overtook the DUP as the biggest party, a seismic symbolic and psychological shift.

An AM of the DUP will occupy the deputy first minister post, which has equal authority but less prestige. There has been speculation hat Emma Little-Pengelly, the DUP assembly member for Lagan Valley, will fill the post while Donaldson, an MP, remains at Westminster.

O’Neill has pledged to be a first minister “for all” and made conciliatory gestures towards unionists. However Sinn Féin’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said Irish unity was now within “touching distance”.

Sinn Féin, the DUP, the Alliance and the Ulster Unionist party will share ministerial positions using the D’Hondt mechanism based on party strengths, with the exception of the justice ministry, which is decided using a cross-community vote. The Social Democratic and Labour party will form the executive’s opposition.

The executive faces a daunting list of problems including a fiscal crisis, crumbling public services and eroded faith in democracy.

Stormont’s restoration will release a £3.3bn package – including pay rises for public sector workers who have staged multiple strikes – that the UK government had made available, conditional on the revival of institutions set up under the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Donaldson said the parties would seek additional funding from the Treasury. “The finance piece is unfinished business which we intend to finish.”

Business leaders and the Irish government have welcomed the return of power sharing, saying it should provide stability after years of Brexit-related convulsions.

The new rules to smooth trade across the Irish Sea were unveiled by the government on Wednesday. The measures remove routine checks on goods from Great Britain that are destined to remain in Northern Ireland and replace them with a “UK internal market system” for goods that remain within the UK.

The House of Commons approved the changes on Thursday without a formal vote, despite Brexiters’ concerns about the region remaining under EU law.