Can the Northern Ireland Assembly finally be persuaded back to work?

After a political impasse lasting almost two years, the British government is running out of patience, but this is not a time to stop talking, says Sean O’Grady

Rows about Brexit trade rules and funding from Westminster have effectively paralysed Stormont (PA)

The Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) and Executive (NIE), set up under the historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998, have been effectively suspended since February 2022, when the Democratic Unionists withdrew in protest at the then Northern Ireland protocol. The secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, is impatient about getting the politicians back to work to make some increasingly overdue decisions, not least on pay in the province’s public services, effectively frozen for three years.

On Thursday, as a result, Northern Ireland faces something akin to a general strike, where 15 trade unions will take part in industrial action across health, education and the civil service. The timing of the strike is significant. Heaton-Harris has to make a decision about the future of the power-sharing institutions by Thursday, and he has declared, perhaps unwisely for someone in his line of work in that part of the world, that “the time for talking is over”.

What is the row about?