A Sligo Leitrim Sinn Fein TD says every opportunity was given to the North’s First Minister, the DUP’s Arlene Foster, to try to get the situation over the so-called ‘cash for ash’ controversy resolved.
However, Deputy Martin Kenny claims the nub of the current political impasse in Northern Ireland is that there are many people in the Democratic Unionist Party who ‘hark back to some version of the failed past’, to a ‘winner takes all’ situation.
Deputy Kenny says there is a ‘very sectarian attitude’ within the DUP against Sinn Fein and other Nationalists, as well as Unionists who, he said, want to be progressive.
And he says while it was possible to work with the late Ian Paisley and his successor Peter Robinson, this was not the case with Arlene Foster:
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein has again denied that Martin McGuinness’s resignation from Northern Ireland’s power sharing executive was due to illness.
Mr McGuinness has cited the First Minister Arlene Foster’s handling of a controversial energy scheme for his decision.
Health secretary Michelle O’Neill says it was purely about the political dispute with the DUP:
