Northern Ireland Exective due to meet

As expected First Minister Peter Robinson and the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness have agreed to a deal and the executive will meet this Thursday 20th November for the first time since June 19th. Peter Robinson had this to say:

"We have agreed the executive should meet this Thursday, 20 November, the meetings will continue each week until business is up to date, we will then revert to our fortnightly meeting"

"The agreement we have reached represents a very satisfactory resolution of the most difficult issues relating to the modalities of transferring power and meets all of the publicly expressed concerns," Mr Robinson said.

"We believe these arrangements are capable of gaining the confidence of the community and we look to the prime minister to make good his commitment of helping to resolve the financial arrangements relating to the devolution of these powers."

Fair Deal has detail on the nature of the appointment of a Justice Minister which will be by cross-community vote until 2012 with a sunset clause:

“The following arrangements would be subject to a sunset clause which would bring them to an end not later than May 2012. Following a period of operation they would be reviewed in light of the experience. Permanent arrangements would then be put in place by 2012. There would be no fall-back arrangements in place and there would therefore be a necessity for the parties to agree a way forward by this time.”

Pete Baker has already noted that Sinn Fein wanted a definite date for the devolution of Policng & Justice and that they have failed to achieve that. What this announcement has set into motion is negotiations and discussions in parallel to the current executive getting on with their jobs, and Sinn Fein should now be seriously questioned over their handling of the situation. What was it all for? As I said yesterday there is probably more to come out of this than movement on Policing & Justice and it would be foolish to think that we would hear of anything else so soon.

The issue has not been resolved, or even parked: it is ongoing. Watch this space.