Givan confirmed as N Ireland’s First Minister, O’Neill deputy

BELFAST: Paul Givan and Michelle O’Neill have accepted their nominations as First and deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland, despite significant opposition from senior DUP members over the process.

DUP leader Edwin Poots formally nominated Lagan Valley MLA Givan at a special sitting of the Stormont Assembly on Thursday. Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy nominated his party colleague Ms O’Neill to take up the role of deputy First Minister. Givan thanked his party leader for having “confidence in me”.

He told the Assembly he shares the same “drive and determination” to serve the people of Northern Ireland as the party leaders before him. He added: “There is much goodwill from the public for this place to work. We must recognise there is more in common than separates us. Northern Ireland is a special place.”

The process went ahead despite a morning of uncertainty and unease from senior DUP figures who questioned their party leader’s decision to proceed.

Party MPs and peers sent an urgent email to Poots on Thursday morning urging him to hold off nominating Givan as First Minister until he explained his decision to reconstitute the powersharing administration after Sinn Fein secured a key concession on Irish language laws.

A post-midnight announcement by the UK government committing to pass the stalled laws at Westminster in the autumn, if they are not moved at the Stormont Assembly in the interim, was enough to convince Sinn Fein to drop its threat not to nominate a deputy First Minister as joint head of the devolved Executive. The development came after a night of intensive talks involving Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis and DUP and Sinn Fein delegations in Belfast.

Despite significant opposition among some DUP elected representatives, Poots pushed ahead with the nomination of Givan.

An email sent to Poots, a copy of which has been seen by the PA news agency, is signed by defeated leadership candidate Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, party chairman Lord Morrow, senior MPs Sammy Wilson, Gregory Campbell and Gavin Robinson, former deputy leader Lord Dodds and a number of other senior members.

In total seven of the DUP’s eight MPs signed the email, with Ian Paisley being the exception. The party’s five peers also signed it. Many of those who signed the email would have supported Sir Jeffrey in his leadership bid, though some, like MP Paul Girvan, supported Poots’s candidacy.

Poots was briefing his party colleagues on the late-night development at Parliament Buildings on Thursday morning.

A stand-off between the Executive’s two main parties over the thorny language issue had been threatening the future of the fragile institutions in Belfast.

The issue came to a head this week as a result of the process required to reconstitute the Executive following the resignation of ousted DUP leader Arlene Foster as First Minister.

The joint nature of the office Mrs Foster shared with deputy First Minister Ms O’Neill meant her departure automatically triggered the removal of Ms O’Neill from her position – as one cannot hold post without the other.

While Poots, who succeeded Mrs Foster, has vowed to implement all outstanding aspects of the New Decade, New Approach deal, he has declined to give Sinn Fein a specific assurance that he will move on the language laws in the current Assembly mandate, a key demand of the republican party.

However, in the early hours of Thursday the Secretary of State announced that the government would table the language legislation at Westminster in October if Stormont had failed to do so by the end of September.

Welcoming the move, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said Lewis’s intervention was the “only viable way” to break the deadlock. She confirmed the party would renominate Ms O’Neill later on Thursday.