The Irish and UK governments have signalled that a revived Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) to examine alleged breaches of IRA and loyalist ceasefires could help bolster confidence in the fragile power-sharing settlement in Northern Ireland.
After two hours of talks in Dublin on Tuesday between the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, and a host of Irish cabinet ministers, the Irish foreign minister, Charles Flanagan, said a reconstituted IMC, which last reported in 2012, was under consideration.
Little detail was given but he suggested fresh multi-party talks, with Westminster and Dublin overseeing the process, could be imminent. “I would expect there will be a level of talk and negotiations over the next few weeks,” he said.
“A number of options were discussed by the secretary of state and ourselves as to how best we might facilitate the restoration of trust and confidence in the Northern [Ireland] institutions.
“In the event that talks take place, we will have a fundamental role in facilitating, influencing and advocating a re-engagement on the part of the parties in Northern Ireland towards the Good Friday agreement.”
Flanagan added: “One option has been that there be some form of independent monitoring arrangement. Again, the detail wasn’t discussed; however, it remains an option.”
Villiers also suggested that bringing back the IMC, which last reported in 2012, could restore trust between unionists and republicans. “The problem we have at the moment is real. There’s a genuine concern about the current situation,” she said.
Flanagan said it was essential that the two governments and the main Stormont parties got round the table to save the devolved regional administration from breaking up.
His comments came amid heightened fears that the main unionist party, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), could follow the Ulster Unionist party in exiting Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government. The Stormont parliament’s business committee rejected a DUP proposal for a four-week adjournment to allow for all-party negotiations over the crisis.
The party is under pressure to pull out of the power-sharing executive in Belfast over the Provisional IRA’s (PIRA) alleged involvement in the murder of ex-republican prisoner Kevin McGuigan last month.
The DUP leader, Peter Robinson, was due to meet the prime minister, David Cameron, in London on Tuesday.
Sinn Féin said on Tuesday that the crisis was wholly manufactured as part of inter-unionist pre-election rivalry. Northern Ireland goes to the polls in the first half of next year to elect a new assembly.
Sinn Féin’s assembly member for Newry and Armagh, Conor Murphy, said the party would not be excluded by unionists from the power-sharing executive.
“We and the 178,000 people who voted for us in the last assembly elections will not be excluded or discriminated against. Those days are over,” he said.
Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator during the peace process, Martin McGuinness, insisted McGuigan and the man he is alleged to have murdered back in May, former Belfast IRA commander Gerard “Jock” Davison, were killed by “criminals”.
Mainstream republicans continue to deny that the PIRA or ex-members of the organisation had any involvement in McGuigan’s murder.
However, his family and other republican sources are adamant that PIRA veterans linked to the mainstream republican movement were behind the killing in the Short Strand district of east Belfast.
