Foster and new Sinn Féin leader in North to meet Theresa May

DUP leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Féin's new Northern leader Michelle O'Neill will outline their contrasting views on Brexit at a meeting on Monday with British prime minister Theresa May in Wales.

Ahead of Mrs May’s visit to Dublin on Monday, the Northern Ireland politicians will attend a UK leaders meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee in Cardiff.

Monday marks the first time Ms O’Neill meets Ms Foster and Mrs May since she took over last week from Martin McGuinness as Sinn Féin’s most senior politician in the North.

The DUP and Sinn Féin have fundamentally different views on Brexit. The DUP backed the Leave campaign in the EU membership referendum in June, and views the UK result in favour of Brexit – by 52 per cent to 48 per cent – as binding.

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Sinn Féin backed remaining in the EU, so there will be no single, united voice or commonality at the meeting. The party is calling for Northern Ireland’s vote to retain membership – 56 per cent to 44 per cent – to be respected.

The Sinn Féin Brexit spokesman in the North, John O’Dowd, has said Ms Foster is “living in denial about the damage that Brexit will do to our economy”, and accused the DUP of siding with the Tories in Britain.

Ms O’Neill said she would again be raising with Ms May “the democratic imperative to respect the vote in the North to remain in the EU”.

A DUP spokesman claimed Sinn Féin was threatening the people with direct rule from London so “it’s hard to take seriously any criticism of the Conservative Party which, on the basis of Sinn Féin’s present position, will be taking all decisions in relation to Northern Ireland very soon”.

Campaigning

Stormont parties are campaigning for votes ahead a snap election on March 2nd which was called after the collapse of the power-sharing DUP and Sinn Féin government over the fallout of a botched green energy programme, now the subject of a public inquiry.

When Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams attended a republican youth conference in Derry on Saturday, he said the onus was on the Taoiseach and the Irish Government "to insist that the North is accorded special designated status within the EU after Brexit" at the meeting with Mrs May in Dublin on Monday.

Mr Adams repeated his claims that Brexit threatened the “entire architecture” of the Belfast Agreement, and the British government “ignores the democratic vote of the people of the North to remain in the EU”.

On Sunday Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd told the BBC the meeting between the Taoiseach and Mrs May was “critical to these islands”, and said an agenda needed to be agreed for Brexit negotiations because “if we don’t it will be bad for everybody”.

“Peace in this island is number one. It is a no brainer. We can’t have a Mexican wall between North and South of this country.”