THE New Decade New Approach (NDNA)  deal was sprung onto the local parties in January 2020 by Simon Coveney and erstwhile British Secretary of State Julian Smith.
 
Within just a week its significance was critically damaged when Boris Johnson arrived to endorse it with no additional resources for its wide-ranging commitments. A couple of weeks later Julian Smith was sacked and replaced by Brandon Lewis. By March the NDNA was all but torn up by the British government when Lewis announced that the commitment to implement the legacy structures of the Stormont House Agreement within 100 days would in fact not happen, and instead the British government was thinking about amnesty for British soldiers.

It has been remarkable that the parties have struggled on to the floating debris of NDNA and made the best of it. They do that because underneath all of the dispute there is a mutual commitment to the Northern institutions under the Good Friday Agreement and to the citizens they represent. 

Sinn Féin moving the focus from Stormont to Westminster for legislation of Irish cultural rights is a move to save the institutions and give them a fighting chance. Many will worry about this tactic, though, as this British Government has shown nothing but bad faith on Ireland to date.

The pick and mix approach by the British government has, however, been infectious as the DUP decide not to progress the commitments to cultural rights in the NDNA. It is entirely unsurprising that this has created a political crisis. It is impossible to believe that the current DUP leadership is more relaxed about Irishness than the outgoing one, when it is made up of those with the strongest anti-Irish language  track records within DUP ranks. Their feet-dragging on the cultural act is entirely connected to the attitudes that saw Paul Givan remove Líofa grants and Irish language names on boats painted over by Michelle McIlveen.

ANSWER APPEARS BLEAK

Sinn Féin has had no option than to push the matter of the Irish language to see if power sharing is possible post-pandemic and post-Arlene Foster. The answer appears thus far to be a bleak one. We all recognise that resistance to Irish language rights is indicative of a sectarian anti-Irish sentiment that cripples the potential for power-sharing.
 
But now it is pushed we see where we are at. Power-sharing in its current form under the GFA cannot deliver universal human rights or equal citizenship. It is incapable of it. But this is not news.

In 2006 the British Government stated in Annex B of the St Andrews Agreement that they would “introduce an Irish Language Act... and work with the... Executive to enhance and protect the development of the Irish language”.  Despite the horror picture that has been cultural rights in this part of Ireland since then, there has been zero mention of implementation via Westminster.
 
Sinn Féin moving the focus from Stormont to Westminster for legislation of Irish cultural rights is a move to save the institutions and give them a fighting chance. Many will worry about this tactic, though, as this British Government has shown nothing but bad faith on Ireland to date.
 
This moment needs to be seen for what it is. A republican commitment to the institutions, despite the agreements which set up the institutions being under-implemented. No cries of “But the waiting lists” can hide the harsh truth. Agreements not being implemented is draining the peace agreement of credibility and turns our minds yet again to the constitutional question. Victims and survivors, so brutally treated last year, will watch this, however, and hope any recommitment to NDNA means a recommitment to their inalienable rights.