BELFAST, North Ireland (Reuters) — Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness will resign from his post in protest against his power-sharing government partners’ handling of a controversial energy scheme, he said on Monday (January 9).
McGuinness’s nationalist Sinn Fein party had called on First Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the province’s largest pro-British party, to step aside while an investigation take place into the botched scheme it says could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.
“The First Minister has refused to stand aside. Therefore it is with deep regret and reluctance that I am tendering my resignation as deputy First Minister. We now need an election to allow the people to make their own judgement,” McGuinness said in a statement.
Born in Londonderry in May 1950, McGuinness joined the Irish Republican Army at the age of 20 as the guerrilla group began its 30-year campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, swiftly rising to become a senior commander.
He became Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator in the early 1990s and played a central role in talks that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to end conflict between majority Protestants committed to ties with Britain and a Roman Catholic minority in favour of a united Ireland.
In 2007 McGuinness became deputy first minister of Northern Ireland when the province’s Protestant and Catholic leaders launched a new power sharing government.