Northern Ireland Assembly on Brink After Unionist Ministers Resign

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “gravely concerned” about the situation in the North yesterday.

The exit of Mr Robinson along with three of the DUP’s four other ministers, and its one junior minister, has left the 13-minister administration in freefall.

Arlene Foster will begin today as the sole unionist in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government after the mass resignation of her fellow party members.

UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said Mr Storey’s claim that the IRA no longer existed was “utterly preposterous”.

“If this action by the DUP is intended by them to create space for talks to begin next Monday, we will certainly do everything in our power to make that work”, said McGuinness of Sinn Fein.

That means the status of the IRA and Sinn Fein’s denial must be addressed as a matter of urgency, not relegated to the bottom of the agenda, as it was this week.

“It’s an extremely worrying and difficult situation at the moment”, Cameron said after a speech in northern England. Sinn Féin opposes welfare changes which it says will hurt the most vulnerable but the British Government believes will encourage people back to work.

On September 10th, Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland’s secretary of state acknowledged that the day’s dramas were “a sign of a complete breakdown in the working relationships within the executive”.

The DUP have been in power since 2007 alongside republicans Sinn Fein.

“The IRA has gone, the IRA have stood down, they have put their arms beyond use, they have left the stage, they are away and they are not coming back”, he said.

Sinn Fein has accused the DUP and UUP of ramping up a crisis in a self-serving effort to out do each other ahead of next year’s scheduled Assembly election. All three men were released, unconditionally on Thursday evening.

“It is unacceptable in any part of our country to have active paramilitary groups”, he said.

The DUP health, enterprise and social development ministers quit on Thursday amid the deepening political crisis.

The disclosures have heaped pressure on Sinn Fein to explain why the paramilitary organisation is still apparently in existence. However, if the party resigns its ministerial posts the institutions will not fall immediately, as the party will be given seven days to renominate ministers.

McGuigan was a former member of the Irish Republican Army whose killing, police suggested, was retaliation for the assassination in May of Gerard Davison, reputedly a former IRA commander in Belfast. Party bash president Gerry Adams, who has all the time denied membership of the IRA, refuted Hamilton’s claim.

Adams said that an adjournment of the Assembly would undermine confidence in the political process and play into the hands of those who want the institutions to fail.

“An adjournment will reward bad behaviour and further undermine confidence in the political process”, he said.

“We have a short window of opportunity to chart a different course through this crisis”.