The transfer of policing and justice powers to the Northern Assembly could be delayed for several years, a senior Democratic Unionist Party politician claimed yesterday.
Ian Paisley jnr said that, contrary to the St Andrews Agreement target of May next year, the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Assembly could only happen in a "future Assembly" - which at the earliest would be in 2011.
Mr Paisley, a junior Minister in the North's new administration, made clear yesterday that the DUP would use its effective political veto in the Assembly to prevent any attempt to devolve policing and justice powers by May next year or at any other time if the party did not believe there was sufficient public confidence to justify this transfer.
In the critical political negotiations of recent months, Sinn Féin made the transfer of these powers by May next year a key priority for agreeing to devolution.
The British and Irish governments also stated in the St Andrews Agreement of October last year they believed that sufficient community confidence should be established by May 2008 to devolve these powers.
However, at a conference in Belfast yesterday, "Criminal Justice Facing Devolution", Mr Paisley said he did not believe the transfer of policing and justice - effectively the creation of a Northern Executive department of justice - was achievable in the lifetime of the current Assembly, which runs out in May 2011.
Mr Paisley said this summer's marching season would be a significant test and a measuring scale of how much was being achieved in creating public confidence. "If community confidence can be built during these periods that were once high with tension then the prospects of devolving policing and justice some time during the life of a future Assembly will be better than they are today," he said.
"As a person within the DUP keen to see these powers devolved, I am realistic enough to know that devolving them prematurely and before we have built that community confidence would be foolhardy," said Mr Paisley.
When asked by The Irish Times, on the margins of the conference, was he categorically stating the devolution of these powers would not happen by May next year, he replied, "I believe that, realistically, it will be for a future Assembly. It won't be for this Assembly mandate . . . I made it fairly clear - I think I made it explicitly clear - that it is for a future Assembly, and there is no point in kidding around with that, that somehow things could be done," said Mr Paisley.
However, Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey, who also addressed the conference, said the parties were working to the "agreed timeframe" of St Andrews. "We are working in the context that transfer of power will happen next year," he said.
"It is up to the parties to work together and not to be making silly grandstand headline statements which really would set the thing back. Our job as politicians is to create confidence within the public and within the communities and to agree the timeframe, agree the modality, and get the thing done," said Mr Maskey, who also serves on the policing board.
Asked could Mr Paisley's statement cause tensions in the powersharing Executive and Assembly, Mr Maskey said he was not "that concerned" by the junior Minister's comments. Referring to last week's controversy over Mr Paisley's comments that he was "pretty repulsed" by homosexuality, Mr Maskey said, "I don't know whether he wants to distract from one headline by creating another."