SINN FEIN welcomed the decision by Northern Ireland’s largest British unionist party late on Monday to end a boycott that left the region’s people without a power-sharing administration for two years.

After a marathon late-night meeting, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Jeffrey Donaldson said today that the party’s executive had backed proposals to return to the government. 

He said that agreements reached with the Westminster government “provide a basis for our party to nominate members to the Northern Ireland Executive, thus seeing the restoration of the locally elected institutions.”

The British government has agreed to give Northern Ireland more than £3 billion for its public services, but only if the executive in Belfast was back up and running by February 8. Failing this, a fresh election would have been called.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said. “The parties entitled to form an executive are meeting today,” to make the final arrangements.

Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said today that she was pleased that Northern Ireland was on the “cusp of the restoration of government.”

She told reporters: “It has been a long time coming, but we are very pleased we are at this juncture.

“We are conscious that there is a huge amount of work to be done.”

Ms McDonald said that after power sharing is restored, the installation of Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill as Northern Ireland’s first-ever nationalist first minister will be a “moment of great significance.

“It is a mark of the extent of change in the North and right across Ireland.”

But Ms McDonald acknowledged that the “sequencing” of a return to power-sharing still has to be agreed.

Ms O’Neill said that it was a “day of optimism,” although the next few days will be “crucial” to getting Stormont back up and running.

The DUP walked out in February 2022, arguing that they could not accept post-Brexit trade rules. But many felt they were refusing to accept that Sinn Fein was now the dominant political body in the North of Ireland.

Unionists were the largest force in the Northern Ireland Assembly from its establishment in 1998 until 2022, when Sinn Fein won the most seats in the election.

But the leader of the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice party, Jim Allister, described the deal as a “tawdry climb down” by the DUP.

The walkout left Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million people without a functioning administration to make key decisions as the cost of living soared and backlogs strained the creaking public health system.