A Stormont committee is to meet later to discuss adjourning the Northern Ireland Assembly.
DUP leader Peter Robinson said his party would resign from the Stormont Executive if the committee did not agree the proposal or if the government does not suspend the institutions.
It follows a political crisis sparked by the murder of former IRA man Kevin McGuigan Sr.
This deepened after the arrests of three senior republicans on Wednesday.
Sinn Féin's northern chairman Bobby Storey is one of the three republicans being questioned about the murder.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland's Chief Constable George Hamilton said last month that Provisional IRA members had a role in Mr McGuigan Sr's murder.
Sinn Féin has denied this and maintains the Provisional IRA no longer exists.
The chief constable also said there was no evidence at that stage that the killing had been sanctioned at a senior level of the organisation.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said what was needed was "positive leadership" and a "willingness to sort out these problems".
"There is only one republican organisation that is Sinn Féin, there is only one leadership ard chomhairle [party executive]," he said.
"The IRA has gone."
Stormont business committee
The committee has 10 members drawn from the five main parties and is chaired by the speaker and includes party whips.
It generally meets once a week while the assembly is sitting.
Its main function is to consider what business is to be scheduled for assembly plenary sessions, held on Monday and Tuesday.
The speaker is Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin and it is the speaker who has the power to allow a recall of the committee.
Unlike important votes in the assembly, votes on the business committee do not require cross-community support but straight majorities.
Committee members cast their votes in proportion to their parties' strengths in the assembly. For example, DUP members wield 38 votes, representing the number of MLAs in the assembly group.
Last week, the DUP's request for an adjournment of the assembly was rejected because it only won support from Alliance and was therefore outvoted by the combined votes of the SDLP, Sinn Féin and the UUP.
DUP Finance Minister Simon Hamilton said the situation was "very difficult" but said he thought a resolution was possible.
PAcemaker"It is not business as usual, it cannot be business as usual," he said.
"We need to have space for talks... we have had murder now being investigated.
"It highlights the seriousness of the situation."
The DUP asked for the assembly's business committee to meet on Thursday.
Stewart Dickson, Alliance, said he had been told the committee would meet at 14:00 BST.
"First of all we would be encouraging the parties to return to talks via the secretary of state, but we also believe that it's important that there is space for that to take place in," he said.
"If an adjournment would assist that and would assist the assembly to continue to allow those talks to take place, then we would be supporting a motion to adjourn the assembly for a fixed period of time."
Analysis Mark Devenport political editor
The political difference between adjournment and suspension is that adjournment would be a voluntary decision by the parties of the assembly and therefore that would not necessarily be as big a deal as suspension.
In that scenario, the secretary of state would be in control of the institutions and she would decide how long it would go on and when the assembly might come back.
If we have an adjournment, the DUP, Sinn Féin and indeed the other ministers who are still in office, they still continue in their jobs.
A suspension would mean not just the assembly, but also the executive and the ministers.
Grave mistake
As the DUP are the largest party, the power-sharing institutions cannot operate without them.
Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has said it would be a grave mistake on the part of the British government to suspend the institutions.
The SDLP have not definitively stated their position, but it is believed they are still against the idea of adjourning the assembly.
They are meeting Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in Dublin on Thursday morning.
Party leader Alasdair McDonnell told RTE News that the SDLP would take Mr Kenny's views into account before making any decision on an adjournment vote.
Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt said the only way his party would support an adjournment was if Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams "injected some honesty" about the "status of the IRA in 2015".
"If Sinn Féin's refusal to be honest is to result in a breakdown, we support suspension over adjournment, for one simple reason," he said.
"With adjournment everyone keeps their salaries and privileges, their status and staff. I can think of nothing that will focus minds more than unemployment."
'DUP ploy'
Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister said attempts to adjourn the assembly were "cosmetic".
"Mere adjournment of the assembly is a DUP ploy to keep Sinn Féin in government," he said.
"Adjournment mean ministers carry on strutting the stage as ministers. All it means is that they are not accountable to the assembly.
"There is a party in government that is linked through the IRA to murder on the streets."
Source: BBC
No comments:
Post a Comment