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DUP threatens to pull plug on Stormont government over Provisional IRA claims DUP threatens to pull plug on Stormont government over Provisional IRA claims
(about 2 hours later)
The Democratic Unionists have said they are prepared to pull the plug on Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government over claims that the Provisional IRA still exists. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing coalition is hanging by a thread after the Democratic Unionist party confirmed it was prepared to follow the UUP in quitting the Stormont government over alleged ongoing Provisional IRA (PIRA) activity.
Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP for Lagan Valley, said the party would seek to have Sinn Féin removed from devolved government at Stormont, and “if the other parties are not prepared to support the exclusion of Sinn Féin then we will act unilaterally”. The DUP MP for Lagan Valley, Jeffrey Donaldson, said on Thursday his party was preparing a motion to suspend Sinn Féin in government over claims republicans had broken promises that the PIRA had disbanded as a paramilitary force.
On Wednesday the Ulster Unionist party, the DUP’s unionist rival, said it would pull out of the five-party ruling coalition after police blamed the recent murder of an ex-IRA assassin, Kevin McGuigan, on members of the Provisional IRA. Donaldson said that if the remaining parties in the power-sharing coalition refused to support their proposal, the DUP would bring down the regional government, probably on a temporary basis.
Unionists have said the killing breaks the terms of an agreement that stipulated that PIRA decommission its weapons and stand down as a paramilitary force as a condition of Sinn Féin taking part in Northern Ireland’s executive. “In the end, if the other parties are not prepared to support the exclusion of Sinn Féin, then we will act unilaterally, and if that means that we have a period in Northern Ireland where we don’t have a government until we resolve and sort out these issues then so be it,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
A DUP delegation will meet the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, in Belfast on Thursday to discuss the furore sparked by McGuigan’s murder and the police assessment that PIRA members were involved. The DUP MP was responding to Wednesday’s move by his former party, the Ulster Unionists, whose leadership recommended the party leave the Northern Ireland executive. The UUP’s ruling body is certain to endorse that line from party leader Mike Nesbitt when it meets on Saturday.
Any DUP attempt to exclude Sinn Féin from the executive would need the support of Villiers and other executive parties. If that backing is not forthcoming, the DUP could bring down the institution by resigning its first minister post, held by Peter Robinson. The political crisis has come about after the murder of ex-IRA prisoner Kevin McGuigan whom mainstream republicans blamed for killing former Belfast IRA commander Gerard “Jock” Davison back in May. Last week, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, George Hamilton, said individual PIRA members were responsible for killing McGuigan, although he stressed it had not been sanctioned by the organisation’s leadership.
Donaldson, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, criticised the UUP for acting without the agreement of other parties in the executive. The only people punished by the move were the UUP’s own voters, he said. However, confirmation alone that the PIRA remained in tact as an organisation was enough for unionists to contemplate leaving the power-sharing administration with Sinn Féin.
However, he added: “Like the UUP, we entered this government on a clear understanding that Sinn Féin were committed to peaceful means and the IRA have left the stage.” Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly, an influential figure within the republican movement, accused the UUP of manufacturing a crisis. “I do not think the executive should fall. Mike Nesbitt is trying to push the DUP into following them [the UUP],” Kelly said.
Donaldson went on: “We are going to move to exclude Sinn Féin from the government. We believe the people who should be punished here are the people who have done wrong, not the people who have stood by their pledges, who uphold the rule of law and who support democracy. The UUP’s decision to move into opposition inside the Stormont assembly has put intense internal pressure on the DUP, the largest unionist political force, to either seek to exclude Sinn Féin from government or resign from the administration, triggering fresh elections.
“In the end, if the other parties are not prepared to support the exclusion of Sinn Féin then we will act unilaterally, and if that means that we have a period in Northern Ireland where we don’t have a government until we resolve and sort out these issues then so be it.” Explaining his reasons for urging an exit from government on Wednesday, Nesbitt said: “Seventeen years on, we are told the IRA still exists, and that it has a command structure, at a senior level.
Unionists have said any evidence of continued PIRA activities, including murder, would mark a breach of key moves to restore devolution in 2005. They point to an IRA statement in 2005 that said the organisation was disbanding as a military force – a key demand from unionist parties before they would go into regional government with Sinn Féin. “We are also told members of the IRA have committed a murder on the streets of our capital city, working with another criminal gang, Action Against Drugs. And in response, Sinn Féin trot out their single transferrable speech of denial. That speech is threadbare. It has put a hole in the fabric of the agreement.”
The Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, said on Sunday that the PIRA had “gone away”, and party colleagues have claimed that the crisis over the McGuigan murder is being exploited for political gain by opponents north and south of the Irish border. Unionists – including the Nobel peace prize winner David Trimble, who helped secure the 1998 Good Friday agreement – have suggested reconstituting the independent monitoring commission to restore confidence in the unionist community.
The former first minister of Northern Ireland and now Conservative peer has argued that a ceasefire monitoring body should be established to examine claims of ongoing IRA and loyalist paramilitary activity. The existence of such a monitoring body would deter further paramilitary violence, Lord Trimble has said.
Meanwhile, a nationalist member of the Stormont assembly alleged on Thursday that the PSNI concocted a secret agreement with the IRA 10 years ago not to prosecute members involved in the forensic cleanup of a bar following a high-profile murder.
The SDLP’s Alex Attwood claims a former PSNI assistant chief constable told him that police would not pursue those who helped the IRA dispose of evidence in the murder of Robert McCartney, from East Belfast. His sisters conducted an international campaign to bring his killers to justice that went all the way to the White House.
A knife used to stab McCartney was disposed off while the bar was wiped clean with bleach and other cleansing agents to remove any DNA or other forensic traces of those who beat up and killed McCartney.
Attwood claimed the senior police officer told him that detectives offered not to prosecute those behind the coverup to get them to inform on the killers. No such information was ever forwarded to the PSNI and no one has ever been convicted of the 33-year-old’s murder. Among those who were questioned about what went on inside Magennis’s bar in January 2005 was a Sinn Féin councillor from the area.
McCartney’s sister Catherine said: “Our family has known for a long time that the criminal justice system is a sham, but details of this secret deal between the police and the IRA illustrates it perfectly.
“It is unbelievable that the police were discussing the tactics and strategy of a murder investigation with the Provos and then implementing what was agreed. Neither Sinn Féin nor the Provisional IRA, a proscribed organisation, should have had any input into my brother’s murder investigation. It is sickening and disturbing beyond belief that they did.”