DUBLIN — The rival leaders of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government traded accusations Friday over which side has done more to undermine pandemic restrictions.
The public finger-pointing between leaders who are supposed to be speaking with one voice bookended Friday’s meeting of the North South Ministerial Council, an institution established as part of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. It brings together the leaders of both parts of Ireland every six months to promote island-wide cooperation — an aspiration exposed by the COVID-19 crisis.
Irish government leaders taking part in Friday’s summit — held by video to avoid infection risks — stressed the need to help Northern Ireland get its runaway infection rate under control. Cases are currently four times higher north of the border, where restrictions have been imposed more slowly and fleetingly than in the Republic of Ireland.
But the Northern Ireland Executive’s joint leaders, First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill, spent more time Friday blaming each other’s parties for bungling the challenge.
Foster, whose Democratic Unionist Party represents British Protestants, accused O’Neill’s Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party of setting a hypocritical example that has encouraged the public to disregard restrictions.
O’Neill, in turn, accused the Democratic Unionists of blocking other Northern Ireland parties’ united demand for stronger restrictions over the past two months in line with public health advice.
Foster’s DUP finally relented behind the scenes Thursday night as O’Neill announced plans for a six-week lockdown to commence the day after Christmas.
“Previous interventions weren’t hard enough. They weren’t long enough,” O’Neill said before Friday’s summit. “We need to prevent the health service from being completely crushed in January.”
She said the Democratic Unionists “have worked against the entire public health team” and it was “important that we distinguish the approach to the pandemic. I have never deviated from the public health advice.”
Foster insisted the policy U-turn — following weeks of DUP claims that shuttering businesses could cause as many health problems as the pandemic — represented “a failure of society as a whole that we have had to introduce these restrictions in a very draconian way.”
She pinned blame for this breakdown in “personal responsibility” on Sinn Féin, citing its oversight of a large-scale Irish Republican Army funeral in June.
“Compliance in Northern Ireland was very good and in fact we were the envy of other colleagues in the United Kingdom,” Foster told a video press conference, with O’Neill participating from another location.
“But at the end of June one party, Sinn Féin, decided that whilst they made the laws, they were also above the laws. And now we find ourselves in a situation where messaging is very difficult. We’ve seen a breakdown in compliance.”
About 2,000 Sinn Féin supporters attended the Catholic west Belfast funeral of IRA veteran Bobby Storey at a time when such large-scale events were supposedly banned by the Northern Ireland Executive.
This week, police completed their investigation into COVID-19 violations during the event and sent an evidence file to public prosecutors. As part of the probe they interviewed O’Neill, who was photographed maskless alongside other Sinn Féin leaders in the crowd.
The BBC’s Gareth Gordon on Friday asked O’Neill during the post-summit press conference how she “can say with a straight face you have never deviated from public health advice,” given her prominent role in the Storey funeral.
O’Neill replied: “I’ve never deviated from the advice of the chief medical officer when he brought forward proposals for how we respond to COVID.” A lengthy silence followed.
