Stormont crisis: Patience has run out over DUP boycott - O'Neill

Michelle O'Neill was speaking at a fringe meeting during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool

Patience has run out over the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) boycott of the Stormont institutions, Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O'Neill has said.

Stormont has been without a functioning executive for 20 months as the DUP protests against post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland.

Ms O'Neill was speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.

She said there was a need to "stop the delay and the dithering".

"All the public services are really really stretched right now," she said. "People are really struggling with the cost of living and there's no executive there to have their backs."

The DUP has argued Northern Ireland's position in the UK internal market has been undermined by provisions in the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Windsor Framework.

On Thursday, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said his party was united over its strategy.

Speaking to BBC News NI during a fringe meeting at the conference, Ms O'Neill said: "People have been more than reasonable to give the DUP space, but that is now coming to an end point."

Earlier, former Northern Ireland Office minister Baroness Smith told Sunday Politics said there had to be movement on restoring devolution.

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Asked if a Labour-led government would force the DUP to return to power-sharing, she said: "You just have to have some discussions."

'I believe it can happen'

The Labour peer also warned of the dangers of direct rule from Westminster, which last ended in 2007.

"I was a direct rule minister, I was told it could be two or three months and I'd come back to my job, I was there for three-and-a-half years," Baroness Smith said.

"Once you get direct rule its much harder to get it away from direct rule and set up the institutions again," she added.

"There has to be a way forward in the interest of Northern Ireland, you can't just have decisions being made in London."

Baroness Angela Smith is a former Northern Ireland minister and Labour's leader in the House of Lords

Baroness Smith said the Conservative government needed to have "a more engaged process" with the people and political parties in Northern Ireland.

She also said there needed to be further engagement with the European Union to negotiate changes to the Windsor Framework.

"If you make a real effort, I believe it can happen," she explained.

The SDLP MP for South Belfast, Claire Hanna, said it would be "madness" for the DUP to extend its Stormont boycott in the hope of getting a better deal from an incoming Labour administration.

Border poll

Earlier this week, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer made it clear he believed the Stormont institutions should be back up and running immediately.

He said the role of the UK government as an honest broker is crucial in finding agreement, and he was "worried that our government has moved away from that honest broker role".

Sir Keir also said a referendum on Irish unification is "not even on the horizon".

On Sunday, the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, defended Sir Keir's comment.

The remark to BBC News NI has been criticised by some nationalists.

Michelle O'Neill said she would expect a possible future Labour government to "adhere to the Good Friday Agreement", which outlined how a Northern Ireland secretary could call a border poll if they believed a majority of people in Northern Ireland wanted constitutional change.

Earlier, the shadow secretary of state, Hilary Benn, said: "The conditions in which a border poll would be held are very, very, clear.

"They are set out in the Good Friday Agreement and everyone's read it and everyone knows what it says.

"And the priority for now is getting a government in Northern Ireland."