DUBLIN, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney on Monday welcomed the confidence and supply agreement reached between the United Kingdom's Conservative Party and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
"The content of the confidence and supply agreement between the Conservative Party and the DUP is primarily a matter for those two parties. I note that the agreement provides DUP support for British government legislation on Brexit," Coveney said in a statement.
On Monday, the DUP, a unionist political party in Northern Ireland, signed a deal with the Conservatives to support British Prime Minister Theresa May's minority government.
Under the deal, about one billion pounds (1.27 billion U.S. dollars) in concessions have been made to Northern Ireland's largest party in exchange for support from its 10 MPs on key votes in the House of Commons.
"An enhanced Northern Ireland voice articulating an agreed devolved government position could see more effective and inclusive representation of the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland at Westminster," said the Irish minister, who is currently in Belfast to assist in the talks aimed at restoring the devolved institutions.
Coveney said a functioning Executive and Assembly is in the best interests of the people of Northern Ireland.
"That is my focus and that of the Irish government," he said.
The Northern Ireland Executive is the administrative branch of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the devolved legislature for Northern Ireland. It consists of the first minister and deputy first minister and various ministers with individual portfolios and remits.
In March's Assembly elections in Northern Ireland, the unionists emerged for the first time ever without a majority, with the pro-republican Sinn Fein making massive gains. Sinn Fein reduced the margin to just one seat, winning 27 assembly seats, just one less than the 28 won by the DUP.
Under Northern Ireland's power-sharing agreement, the government there must be run by Irish nationalists and unionists together.
Monday's deal may yet impact on a June 29 deadline for the DUP and Sinn Fein to bury their differences to enable the re-establishment of the devolved assembly in Belfast.
Failure by the political parties in Northern Ireland to agree to setting up an executive by 4 p.m. Thursday could lead to rule of the region reverting to Westminster.
