Sunak urges Northern Irish executive to focus on ‘day-to-day matters’

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has urged Northern Ireland’s newly restored executive to focus on resolving the “day-to-day things that matter to people” rather than the future question of Irish reunification.

Sunak met political leaders on Monday at Stormont, where the executive was revived on Saturday after his government clinched a deal last week with the region’s biggest pro-UK Democratic Unionist party to end its two-year boycott of the power-sharing process.

The executive’s return, led for the first time by a nationalist first minister from the pro-Irish unity Sinn Féin party, Michelle O’Neill, means London is ready to unlock a promised £3.3bn financial package for the region.

“Our new deal gives them more funding and more powers than they have ever had, so they can deliver for families and businesses,” Sunak said. “And that’s what everyone’s priority is now. It is not constitutional change, it is delivering on the day-to-day things that matter to people.”

O’Neill said at the weekend that the executive’s return heralded a “decade of opportunity” in which a reunification referendum should be held.

However on Monday all parties stressed they would focus on fixing the region’s urgent social and funding problems. Northern Ireland has the longest health service waiting lists in the UK as well as funding crises in education, policing and childcare.

The new executive, which is also headed by the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy first minister, dismissed the £3.3bn package as insufficient and offering only a “short-term solution”.

“If we’re going to be successful politically we also need to have the resources to deliver good public services,” O’Neill told reporters. “The prime minister heard that very loudly and clearly.”

Nevertheless, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said on Monday it was…