Gavan Reilly: What happens if Mary Lou’s in charge?

A FUNNY thought crossed my mind as I watched Michelle O’Neill emerge from Government Buildings on Monday morning, after a Stormont conflab with the Taoiseach. Micheál Martin will be heading north later this week to continue a series of meetings with the leaders of the other local parties. It’s a depressingly familiar choreography, of impasses and stuttering talks, and Taoisigh and Prime Ministers having to shepherd some reluctant deal over the line. Now we face into another round of it.

It's even more depressing when you recall how, in the 24 years of devolved government, how often it doesn’t work. There was no government at all for three months in 2000; none at all between 2002 and 2007; and then again between 2017 and 2020. The present crisis, however, is a different one: it’s about a domestic issue (the protocol and sea border checks) which does not have a domestic fix. Belfast will work only when Brussels has done its bit.

But back to the funny thought. Imagine how implausible it would be for northern nationalist leaders to come to Dublin, begging for interventions from the Taoiseach, if that Taoiseach was from the same party? How would it work if, while Jeffrey Donaldson was demanding action from Boris Johnson, Michelle O’Neill was coming to Dublin to lay out her grievances to Taoiseach Mary Lou McDonald?

You might remember some of the grievances expressed when the DUP ended up pulling the strings in Westminster, and questions about how Britain could properly perform its role as an honest broker and Good Friday guarantor when it clearly had skin in the game. The same would be true at a far higher level of Sinn Féin ruled in Dublin while being sidelined in Belfast.

But it may be a situation to get used to. Who knows when Stormont will work again? And who knows when the next Dáil election might be?