Irish prime minister confident Northern Ireland deal within reach

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar expressed confidence on Wednesday that Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government would be restored in the new year and that reforms on its operation could be up for discussion after that.

Northern Ireland has been without a government for almost two years after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) walked out in protest over Britain’s attempts to settle post-Brexit trade rules for the region, which shares a land border with EU member Ireland.

Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister Chris Heaton-Harris said on Tuesday that talks on restoring the government had not yet produced an agreement, and that there would be no deal before Christmas.

“We think we’ll be able to get this over the line in the new year, have a new executive and assembly up and running and help it to be a success,” Varadkar told a news conference on Wednesday.

Irish nationalists and pro-British unionist politicians are obliged to share power under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord that ended three decades of sectarian violence in the province.

But the ability of the largest party on either side to pull down power-sharing for long periods has been identified by many as a block on progress.

Both the Irish and British prime ministers said earlier this year that they were open to considering reforming Northern Ireland’s political architecture once the power-sharing government underpinning it was restored.

On Wednesday, Varadkar raised the possibility of such talks happening in advance of the next elections due by 2027.

“The last election was held under certain rules and everyone going to vote on that day knew the rules with regard to electing the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister, and the executive,” Varadkar said.

“If there’s going to be any change to the rules, well then they should be negotiated by the two governments and the main parties and put into place in advance to the next assembly elections.”

(Reporting by Graham Fahy, editing by Padraic Halpin and Toby Chopra)