O’Neill hits out at 'undemocratic' DUP block of engagements, including Catherine Connolly meeting

STORMONT FIRST MINISTER Michelle O’Neill has said she will “not be deterred” from doing her job by a DUP move to block her from taking part in public engagements.

Addressing the Stormont Assembly, the Sinn Féin vice president claimed the DUP was motivated by a “supremacist” approach to nationalists.

Her comments came after the DUP last week announced that deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly would no longer participate in joint engagements with O’Neill and would not give the required permission for her to fulfil engagements on her own in the role of First Minister.

Among the events to be impacted by this block was a planned meeting between President Catherine Connolly, O’Neill and Little-Pengelly.

Speaking to reporters from Stormont last week, DUP leader Gavin Robinson remarked: “We blocked [O'Neill] from engaging with the president of Ireland three weeks ago.”

It was put to Robinson that the meeting with Connolly, due to take place on 6 October, had been postponed rather than cancelled, and had been planned to be rescheduled.

Robinson said a meeting had been scheduled, “until the lawbreaking of the First Minister, and then it was cancelled because of the lawbreaking of the First Minister”.

He added that he had received a “strange telephone call” from Sinn Féin president Mary-Lou McDonald “indicating to me how disappointed she would be”.

A statement from the office of the Irish President last week said that in advance of a lunch planned for 6 October, “the Office of the President received a request from the Executive Office asking if the lunch could be postponed, which the Office of the President agreed to”.

A spokesperson for Connolly said that a “further date for the lunch has not yet been agreed”.

‘Supremacist’

Addressing Stormont today, O’Neill said that “at the core of it all is the DUP’s inability to comprehend a nationalist First Minister”.

The unionist party’s move is in response to O’Neill’s involvement in an allegedly unlawful protest against the Orange Order Drumcree parade in Portadown last month.

The First Minister and several of her party colleagues are being investigated by police for taking part in the protest on the Garvaghy Road that was staged to prevent the parade from proceeding through the predominantly nationalist area.

The DUP stopped short of withdrawing Little-Pengelly from her role – a move that would have automatically forced O’Neill from office.

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Speculation is mounting that DUP MP Carla Lockhart is poised to quit the party due to the leadership’s decision not to collapse the powersharing administration in Belfast.

Lockhart said the DUP stance “falls far short” of what she believes “the vast majority of unionists want”.

Delivering a personal statement in the Assembly today, O’Neill accused the DUP of “desperately trying to turn back the clock and to undermine democracy”.

She said the decision to block her attending engagements was “undemocratic, and arrogant, and also supremacist”.

“So I have a message for those sitting opposite me – the days of domination are over,” she told DUP MLAs.

“The days of treating others as second-class citizens are over. The days of telling nationalists to know their place are over and they are not coming back. I stand here today every bit as much as the First Minister as I was this time last week, and when I was whenever I took up this office on that historic day (in 2024).

“So you can play every petty political game and stunt that you wish, but you cannot and you will not thwart the democratic will of the people. I have a very clear and a very strong mandate from the people, and I will fulfil that every day.”

At a Stormont press conference shortly after her statement, O’Neill added: “I’m not going to be deterred from doing my job.”

Earlier, DUP leader Gavin Robinson, speaking to reporters at Parliament Buildings, accused O’Neill of “arrogance”.

But he insisted collapsing the Executive was not the right response to events in Portadown.

“It cannot be that every time a lawmaker in Northern Ireland breaks the law, that the answer is to bring down the institutions,” he said.

Robinson meanwhile said he was sorry that Lockhart disagreed with the majority view inside his party.

Withdrawing Little-Pengelly from her post would automatically force O’Neill from office because of the joint nature of the powersharing structures in Northern Ireland.

Such a step would effectively collapse the devolved administration in Belfast as the Executive could no longer meet to make significant decisions.

However, individual departmental ministers would remain in post for up to six months and the Northern Ireland Assembly could continue to sit.