Charlie Flanagan, Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, described the deal as a “credible roadmap” to tackling ongoing paramilitarism and implement aspects of last December’s Stormont House Agreement.
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Other disputes that have rocked Stormont, including an acute budgetary crisis linked to non-implementation of welfare reforms and the fallout from an IRA murder linked to the Provisional IRA, are set to be addressed in whatever settlement emerges.
On paramilitary activity the agreement includes “fresh obligations on Northern Ireland’s elected representatives to work together on their shared objective of ridding society of all forms of paramilitary activity and groups”.
A meeting of the Stormont Executive and a separate round table meeting involving all the main parties and the two governments have been scheduled to brief political leaders on the details ahead of the planned announcements.
The stand-off between Sinn Fein and Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, effectively dashed hopes of an agreement being struck this week.
However, it does not incorporate a solution to a vexed wrangle over the legacy of Northern Ireland’s troubled past with intensive negotiations failing to resolve the impasse over the prospect of a few official documents not being disclosed, on national security grounds, to proposed truth-recovery bodies.
Statements are expected to be made on Tuesday afternoon, by the DUP and Sinn Féin and by both the British and Irish governments.
“This agreement deals with the issues that have cast the greatest shadow over the future of the devolved institutions here”.
Mr Flanagan also said the Irish Government had given a commitment to fund the long-awaited upgrade of the A5.
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“It tackles the toxic legacy of paramilitarism and its links to criminality”, he said.
