The Taoiseach will this week ask the British prime minister to consider removing a veto that allows Northern Irish parties to block the Assembly or the Executive from functioning.
Micheál Martin is this week due to hold his first meeting with Andy Burnham since the UK Labour Party leader succeeded Keir Starmer as prime minister.
The meeting comes days after US president Donald Trump made a number of comments supporting Irish unity. Burnham had said during his first trip to Northern Ireland that a Border poll was “off the table”.
Martin said he will be raising reform of the first strand of the Belfast Agreement with Burnham, as well as progress on Northern Ireland’s Legacy Act.
Under what is known as strand one of the 1998 agreement, powersharing in Northern Ireland relies on mutual agreement from both communities that has led to stalemates and vetoes that have paralysed Stormont.
Speaking on Monday, Martin said that “most political parties in the North now support reform of strand one”.
“So after the next Assembly elections, it shouldn’t be up to any one party to veto the convening of the Assembly and the appointment of Executive,” Martin said.
“I think that’s something that I hope to engage with prime minister Burnham on and with others, because I think the two governments working at lockstep can bring a lot of progress to the situation.”
The Taoiseach rejected what he called “simplistic rhetoric” from Sinn Féin and others that suggested he was reluctant to engage with plans to prepare for reunification.
“I do have a different perspective in the sense of, I’m not into the simplistic rhetoric, I’m not into sort of timelines, I’m not into sort of saying we do it all next week and it’ll be simple, and I worry sometimes, I think some of the rhetoric I’m listening to more recently, even listening to Sinn Féin at times, is harking back to the 1970s, and I worry about that,” he said.
He claimed McDonald’s party was “digging trenches” and had not shown a “generosity of spirit” on the issue.