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THE DUP is hiding behind the Northern Ireland Protocol to avoid power sharing with nationalists, according to Sinn Fein’s deputy leader.
Michelle O’Neill, the Northern Ireland first minister designate, accused the Democratic Unionist Party on Saturday of refusing to accept that they lost the Stormont elections in May.
The elections saw Sinn Fein win the largest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time.
In an address to her party’s conference, Ms O’Neill said Sinn Fein “stood ready to form a power-sharing government” but that the institutions lay dormant due to the DUP’s boycott.
She said it was disgraceful that things were on hold particularly “in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis”.
Ms O’Neill said the DUP was simply using the protocol as “cover not to enter power-sharing”.
“And the real reason is because as an Irish nationalist, I will be at the helm as first minister — and everybody knows it,” she said.
But DUP MLA Diane Forsythe told BBC Radio Ulster on Monday that “there was no solid basis for an executive and assembly until the protocol is replaced with arrangements that restore Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market and our constitutional arrangements are respected.”
