Bill Clinton optimistic about Stormont restoration

Former US President Bill Clinton has said he is optimistic that the Stormont institutions can be restored.

He is in Northern Ireland to mark 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement.

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Clinton said he expected the barriers to re-establishing the power-sharing executive would be removed in the "not too distant future".

He added that he felt optimistic after meeting DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson on Monday.

Power sharing in Northern Ireland collapsed in February 2022 after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) pulled out of the institutions in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements.

The party said the deal weakened Northern Irelands' position in the United Kingdom.

Mr Clinton met Mr Donaldson in Belfast, where a three-day conference to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is under way.

"I left that meeting [with Sir Jeffrey] more optimistic than I entered it," he said.

"But I don't think I should talk about what we talked about because I'm not in government for the United States, or for Northern Ireland, or the Irish Republic, or the UK.

"I'm here as a friend of the peace process and a friend of hope."

US special envoy to Northern Ireland Joe Kennedy said he was feeling optimistic about Northern Ireland's future.

But he refused to put a deadline on the restoration of the Stormont executive.

"I can't put a timeline or a deadline on it," Mr Kennedy told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme.

"It would be inappropriate for me to do so.

"What I can tell you is that the point has been made repeatedly, from the president of the United States himself, that democracy and prosperity go hand in hand and that all of those institutions, all of these processes, work better when they are functioning, when people are back in them and helping them work."

Mr Clinton said Brexit and the trading arrangement that followed had thrown a "clinker" into Northern Ireland's politics.

"Finding a political solution to that - it's taken some doing. I think they're pretty close with this Windsor Agreement," he added.

"So I expect that, in the not too distant future, the barriers to bringing up the government again will be removed because everybody knows that economically, socially and politically, they would be worse off if they packed it in over the current level of disagreement."

You can see more of the interview with Bill Clinton on The View on BBC One Northern Ireland at 22:40 BST on Thursday.