Good Friday Agreement: Get Stormont up and running, Sunak tells unionists

The prime minister has urged unionist politicians at Stormont to get power-sharing “up and running again”.

Rishi Sunak gave the closing speech at a three-day event at Queen’s University Belfast on Wednesday marking the agreement’s 25th anniversary.

He called it a “profound concern” that power-sharing had not been in place for nine of those years.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the conference had a lack of realism.

His party has blocked the formation of an executive and the functioning of the assembly in protest against post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.

Mr Sunak said the collapse of the institutions “will not bolster the cause of unionism” in the long-term.

“When we look back and 25 years from now, surely we should aspire for our legacy to be nothing less than this: that the institutions have been up and running every single year,” the prime minister said.

He hailed the agreement as the “extraordinary political achievement of…

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This article was written by and originally published on www.bbc.co.uk