Theresa May has no plan to save power-sharing, says Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin has said Theresa May has no viable plan for restoring power-sharing in Northern Ireland, claiming she is “facilitating” a DUP blocking of progress.

Speaking after a meeting with the prime minister, Sinn Féin’s newly installed leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said she feared “entrenchment and drift” in efforts to resurrect devolved institutions at Stormont, which collapsed 13 months ago.

“We can only surmise from the meeting with the British prime minister that the government does not have a plan, there is not a viable plan for carving a path to the restoration of the institutions,” McDonald said.

She accused the government of engaging in a period of reflection which could create a dangerous political vacuum and reiterated calls for an intergovernmental conference including Dublin.

“Any political vacuum is extremely dangerous,” said McDonald after her first meeting with May since she took over from Gerry Adams.

Republicans and their former Stormont coalition partners the DUP held separate meetings with May at the House of Commons on Wednesday.

The DUP said it hoped Westminster would set out a new budget for Northern Ireland “in weeks”, as efforts to restart talks about power-sharing failed to advance.

The leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, said that while no progress had been made she still believed there was a way forward to a solution that did not involve direct rule from London.

Northern Ireland has been without devolved government since January last year and efforts to get the DUP and Sinn Féin to agree a return to Stormont have repeatedly failed.

The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, has asked the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, to set a budget and take key decisions on schools, infrastructure and hospitals as a matter of urgency.

Speaking outside Westminster after meeting with the prime minister, Foster said: “I am hopeful it [budget decisions] will happen in weeks and that it will set out the trajectory for public services in Northern Ireland.”

She said the region had “the worst waiting lists” in the NHS and this needed to be addressed urgently along with other issues such as healthcare reform and mental health care.

Her party colleague Nigel Dodds MP added that the party wanted to see devolved government reinstated.

The meetings with May come a week after talks in Belfast collapsed, prompting some unionists to call for direct rule from Westminster.

After meetings with May and Bradley, O’Neill said the government kept talking about “reflective periods” which was the opposite of what was needed.

She accused the DUP of “blatant disregard” and “disrespect” for the peace agreement.

Among the issues that hit the buffers were Sinn Féin’s demand for an Irish language act, which O’Neill said had been a commitment made in the Good Friday agreement 20 years ago that had yet to be delivered.

She said the DUP “never embraced those commitments” and “disrespected everything” about Irish nationalists.

The DUP has argued that in the absence of devolution the government has to step in on budgetary decisions. “We can’t continue to have Northern Ireland left in limbo as it has been in the last 13 months,” Dodds said.

“We simply want a common sense interim position, whereby ministers are taking decisions, budgets are being set, whilst we continue to work through the issues.”

Sinn Féin opposes any move towards direct rule and has called for a “British-Irish intergovernmental conference”, something supported by the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.

The conference would allow British and Irish ministers to design a way forward if the Northern Ireland parties cannot agree a deal.