Sinn Féin has released documents which the party claimed proved that an agreement had been struck on power-sharing in Northern Ireland – only for the DUP to scupper the deal later.
Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin’s new leader, said the papers showed that a deal was in place between the two parties that would have secured a return to a power-sharing government in Stormont.
McDonald said there would have been three pieces of legislation – an Irish language act, an Ulster Scots act and an overarching respecting language and diversity act.
The Sinn Féin president said they had reached an agreement with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) at the end of last week.
“At that time we advised the DUP leadership that the deal should be closed before those opposed to it could unpick what we achieved,” she said. “We made it clear that [if] there was a delay there was every chance that the package would unravel. The DUP failed to close the deal and went on to collapse the talks process.”
McDonald added: “It is up to Arlene Foster [the DUP leader] to explain this given that the DUP and Sinn Féin leaderships had achieved an accommodation across the issues involved.”
But Foster disputed Sinn Féin’s version of events, saying the DUP “certainly didn’t have an offer of an Irish language act”.
The former first minister continued: “I regret that we didn’t reach an agreement – they were insisting that they have this standalone Irish language act and this is not something I could sign up to – I have always been very clear about that.”
Earlier on Thursday, Labour had called for the publication of documents showing how the deal went wrong.
Owen Smith, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said: “The parties, and if not them, the governments should publish at least the ‘heads of agreement’ that were achieved. They should spell out where the gaps remain.
“People want clarity. The secrecy with which negotiations have been conducted to date has not produced a deal. So let’s see if a little sunlight can expose who are reluctant to restore devolution to a bit of public pressure.”
Smith also urged Theresa May to cut the salaries of Stormont assembly members given that the regional parliament has not functioned for more than 400 days, saying it was time for the UK government to “follow through on their promise” to do so.
In spite of more than 13 months without an assembly, members have still been receiving a salary of £49,000 a year plus expenses.
Quick GuideLanguages in Northern Ireland
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Key facts about Irish and Ulster Scots
Any deal to restore a cross-community power-sharing government in Northern Ireland will be made or broken on the issue of language.
One of Sinn Féin's core demands has been the creation of an Irish language act to give Gaelic the same legal status as English.
Unionists, and in particular the Democratic Unionist party, have resisted this, arguing that it would not only be too costly but would lead to daily culture wars over language on street signs and the way court cases are conducted, and would also "hollow out" British identity in the region.
One way around this is to create a parallel act that would give special status to Ulster Scots and "Orange" culture, which the DUP could claim as its own victory from the talks.
Here are some core facts about language and cultural identity issues that have affected the negotiations:
• In the 2011 census, 179,000 people – or 11% of the population of the region – claimed some knowledge of Irish. But when it came to Irish as their main language, this fell to 4,045. However, Gaelic language activists point out that more than 6,000 children are now studying at Irish-first schools and the sector is growing.
• From the same census figures, more than 140,000 people say they speak Ulster Scots; the majority of them, though, are not exclusively from the unionist or Protestant population. However, the definition of Ulster Scots itself is contentious as many experts dispute that it is a language in its own right, instead calling it a distinct dialect.
• A separate culture act could also be contentious if it were to guarantee the right of Orange parades to march on Northern Irish streets given the territorial disputes connected to loyalist demonstrations in some areas in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Smith also said the Tory-DUP deal, which since last year’s general election has kept the Conservatives in power in Westminster, “reduced their capacity to press the DUP to compromise”.
Shaun Woodward, who served as Northern Ireland secretary under Gordon Brown, expressed concern on Thursday that the political vacuum in the region could lead to renewed violence. The stalemate “genuinely poses risks for the future of peace in Northern Ireland”, he said.
Conor Murphy, a former Belfast government minister and one of Sinn Féin’s key negotiators during the talks with the DUP, described the situation as “depressing”.
Murphy said his party had been “working on the basis that accommodation had been reached. We were expecting the DUP to go off and close the deal in relation to that, but they didn’t do it.”
During 13 months of stop-start negotiations, Sinn Féin’s core demand had been for the drafting of an Irish language act that would put Gaelic on the same legal status as English throughout Northern Ireland.
Hardline unionists portrayed the legislation as forcing compulsory Irish on the unionist community, including bilingual street signs in and around pro-union areas of Northern Ireland.
The appeal to unionist fears about their Britishness being “hollowed out” via such legislation struck a chord with the wider unionist population, according to DUP sources. They said the party leadership was shocked at the level of grassroots opposition to any stand-alone Irish language act.
May and her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, believed a deal was in sight based on a compromise which would create the act but would run parallel to other legislation protecting Ulster Scots and other aspects of Protestant-Unionist culture.
Gregory Campbell, a DUP MP who is one of the sharpest critics of an Irish language act, expressed hope on Thursday that the talking would continue. “Now, where the future has to lie is in trying to pick up the pieces and see if [an] agreement is doable,” he said.
