Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson has announced that Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly will stop participating in joint engagements with First Minister Michelle O’Neill.
It marks an escalation in a row between the two power-sharing parties which began over disagreement related to the Drumcree Orange Order parade.
The DUP have repeatedly hit out at senior Sinn Féin figures, including O’Neill and party president Mary Lou McDonald, for attending protests against the parade along the predominantly nationalist Garvaghy Road.
“Joint activities within the office of First and Deputy First Minister have ceased,” said Robinson. “We will ensure she will not be at Remembrance Sunday – the DUP won’t collapse the Executive for now, but options are available.
“There will be no permission for the First Minister to operate on a solo basis either,” he told reporters at a Stormont press conference on Thursday.
Michelle O’Neill this evening hit out at the decision to end joint engagements as “arrogant and supremacist.”
Responding, O’Neill said that the DUP “is consumed with their own internal leadership troubles and divisions.”
“They are in turmoil. The days of domination and supremacy are over,” said O’Neill. “There will be no going back. Not now, and not ever.”
The move means that the First and Deputy First Ministers will not be in attendance at a UK economic conference to be held in Glasgow tomorrow.
It comes as the DUP said it prevented a meeting with President Catherine Connolly. The joint meeting was to take place during the Drumcree stand-off.
“I can assure you very clearly – it was scheduled until the law breaking of the First Minister, and then it was cancelled because of the law breaking of the first Minister.
“And despite, you might be surprised to learn, the strange telephone call I received from Mary Lou McDonald, indicating to me how disappointed she would be, I can assure toy she was left in no uncertain terms about how disappointed I am, and the unionist people are, and the decent people of Northern Ireland are, with the utter recklessness and lawbreaking of Sinn Fein.
“It’s cancelled, and there’ll be no more joint engagement,” said Robinson.
The DUP have argued that Sinn Féin politicians should face consequences for participating in what it has described as an unlawful protest.
Following the prolonged stand-off, which saw the protest block the parade after permission had initially been granted, the NI Secretary of State subsequently overturned that permission.
Public polling published this week indicated that a slim majority of people in Northern Ireland support the NI Secretary’s decision to ban the march.
More people polled sympathised with the Garvaghy Road residents (38 per cent) than the Portadown Orangemen (21 per cent), but two in five polled did not pick a side.
53% said that Sir Chris Bryant was right to block the contentious parade, while the same percentage – 53% – said that the Parade Commission was wrong to authorise the parade in the first place.