Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Duncan of Springbank on 20 June (HL8501), what assessment they have made of the comments of the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney, about the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in July as a forum for working “to achieve the earliest operation of the devolved institutions”; whether restoring the operation of the devolved institutions will be discussed with the government of Ireland at the Conference; and if so, why.

The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) is concerned with non-devolved Northern Ireland issues. It is not an executive body and as the Belfast Agreement states ‘there will be no derogation from the sovereignty of either government’.