Sinn Féin tells DUP to cancel holidays until Stormont restored

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) cannot "go off on their summer holidays" without ending the political crisis at Stormont, Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy has said.

He said it was not acceptable for the party to continue its 16-month boycott of the assembly and the executive.

He was speaking after talks with Tánaiste (Irish Deputy Prime Minister) Micheál Martin in Belfast.

But DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson called for unionists to be respected.

Stormont's power-sharing executive collapsed last year as part of the DUP's protest against post-Brexit trading rules.

The party's boycott has meant civil servants have been left to run Northern Ireland's public services amid a major budget crisis.

Earlier in May, Sinn Féin won 144 seats in council elections - a rise of 39 on its 2019 showing, which made it the largest party in Northern Ireland's local government and the assembly for the first time.

But the party's vice-president, Michelle O'Neill, has been unable to take up the position of first minister due to the DUP's ongoing boycott.

After speaking to Stormont's main political parties in Belfast Mr Martin he sensed a "genuine desire" from them to get the political institutions up and running again.

But he said Sir Jeffrey had been "fairly frank in terms of what he is looking for" before the DUP would agree to that.

Mr Martin said there were "specific areas - infrastructure is one" - in which the Irish government could offer financial backing to Northern Ireland.

"We would be interested in innovative approaches on a joint basis between the Irish [and] British governments and the Northern Ireland Executive," he said.

"There are areas where we are can help, where we are open to helping."

Sir Jeffrey said unionists wanted to have a "constructive relationship with our nearest neighbours based on mutual respect".

But he said it had been regrettable that the Irish government had "for long periods... failed to recognise that post-Brexit arrangements required the support of unionists as well as nationalists".

Mr Murphy said the political impasse could not be allowed to continue into the autumn.

"While the DUP continue to dither and not tell anyone what they want or what they intend to do, public services are continuing to crash around our ears," he said.

"The idea that we can somehow sit on our hands and the DUP can sail through the Twelfth of July and then go off on their holidays while they're being paid to work with the rest of us to try and get solutions to these problems - it's just not acceptable to us."

He said his party had told the UK and Irish government that they were "not spectators in all of this" and could not "allow this drift to continue".

Also during his visit to Belfast, the tánaiste said Sinn Fein had to "ask itself some hard questions" about its members attending republican commemoration events.

"Sinn Fein has work to do in respect... of the violence the provisional IRA would have caused on many communities and many families," said Mr Martin.

But Mr Murphy of Sinn Féin dismissed the row as "distraction politics" led by the DUP.

He said Sinn Féin politicians had attended the event for 13 years without controversy and everyone had "the right to commemorate their dead in a dignified way".

At Westminster former DUP leader Baroness Foster said politicians in Northern Ireland had to stop the "glorification of terrorism".

"We can ignore it - and it will continue - or we can deal with it," she said on Wednesday.

"Whether you are a loyalist paramilitary or a republican paramilitary, taking up arms is always wrong.

"Therefore I do get very concerned when senior members of Sinn Féin are involved in glorifying events."