Boris Johnson has predicted “an incredible time” for Northern Ireland now that the region has a functioning power-sharing government again.
Prior to a trip to Belfast, the prime minister welcomed the historic deal that restored the cross-community coalition at Stormont.
“After three years, Stormont is open for business again with an executive who can now move forward with improving people’s lives and delivering for all communities in Northern Ireland,” he said.
Johnson said he hoped in particular that the Northern Ireland executive would be able to resolve the current industrial action in the local NHS and drive forward public sector reforms.
“The next decade will be an incredible time of opportunity for Northern Ireland and the whole of the United Kingdom as we come together to unleash the potential of our four nations,” Johnson added.
Johnson and the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, will hold talks with the DUP first minister, Arlene Foster, and Sinn Féin deputy first minister, Michelle O’Neill, at Stormont on Monday to demonstrate support for the new power-sharing government in the region, at the same time as the five-party cross-community coalition restarts the process of running the province’s health, education, transport and other devolved ministries.
The Northern Ireland assembly will reopen for business after an unprecedented Saturday sitting of the regional parliament that took place three years after the collapse of the power-sharing devolved government.
Sinn Féin withdrew from the Stormont executive over the role of their main coalition partners, the Democratic Unionist party, in a controversial, botched green energy scheme that wasted hundreds of millions of pounds.
Johnson said on Sunday that local politicians had “shown great leadership” in agreeing to what he described as a “fair and balanced deal in the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland”.
Varadkar said that political leaders in the region deserved praise “for their decision to put the people they represent first and make measured compromises to reach a deal”.
One of the first issues that the new devolved government will have to tackle is the crisis in the NHS. Northern Ireland has the longest waiting lists in the UK and is facing further strike action from NHS workers including nurses over a disparity in pay between them and their colleagues on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The newly appointed health minister and former Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann pledged on Sunday to resolve the ongoing industrial action and will meet unions this week.
Central government has promised to inject hundreds of millions of pounds into the Northern Ireland NHS in the aftermath of the political agreement that led to the restoration of the devolved government.
The Irish government has also made financial pledges within the agreement to honour commitments to part-fund some north/south projects, such as the A5 dual carriageway and a redevelopment of the Ulster canal system.
Commenting on the need to end the health strike, Swann said: “Obviously, the financial package for the new executive and support from other ministerial colleagues will be central to making that happen. We need our nurses and other health workers back at work. There’s a massive challenge for all of us in making our health service better and our great staff have a vital role to play in that.”
The UUP health minister also vowed that he would not allow the two dominant parties in the ruling coalition – Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists – to “play party politics with health”.
All of the ministries in the devolved government were allocated to parties in proportion to their seats in the assembly except Justice. That ministry is elected on a cross-community vote as part of an agreement dating back ten years. The centrist Alliance party and its leader, Naomi Long, will now head up the department in charge of policing and the courts because unionists have insisted that Sinn Féin cannot control the Justice ministry given that party’s past association with the IRA.
At the core of the deal that resurrected the devolved power-sharing government was a plan by the British and Irish government to create two new “language commissioners” as part of a cultural policy to put Irish on the same legal par with English while protecting Ulster British culture.
Over the last three years Sinn Féin’s key demand to re-enter coalition with the Democratic Unionists has been for a stand-alone Irish language act that would put Gaelic on an equal par to English.
Unionists have opposed such a move but, in a bid to address their concerns, the two governments drew up plans for “an Ulster British language commissioner dealing with Ulster Scots language and associated culture and heritage” as well as an Irish language commissioner.
