THE star of Oscar-winning short An Irish Goodbye, Seamus O'Hara, is the latest high profile Irish actor to criticise politicians in the north for vacating Stormont.
Seamus O'Hara, who celebrated Oscar success earlier this year alongside co-star James Martin and directors Tom Berkeley and Ross White, has branded the Northern Ireland Assembly's continued absence "a national disgrace".
The Cushendun-born former Game of Thrones star made the comments to the PA news agency while speaking out on behalf of The Woman's Aid Federation Northern Ireland, whose funding has been affected by the ongoing political impasse at Stormont.
“This is a very, very worthy cause for Women’s Aid," said O'Hara, who is currently raffling off a pocket square he wore to the Oscars along with a cape worn by his wife to the Vanity Fair after-party in aid of the domestic abuse charity.
"It’s a disaster that their funding has been pulled this way.
“There’s a serious lack of accountability. There’s a serious lack of leadership at the moment. Have we not learned enough? Can we not learn from our lessons and see that the way forward, the way out of these deadlocks is to sit down at a table and talk and compromise where it can be found.
"It’s difficult. It’s not meant to be easy, but we’ve learned that that’s what works. And we’ve also learned that that’s what the general population of the country want to happen.”
The Co Antrim actor described elected politicians who have chosen not to take their seats at Stormont as "simply disrespectful", "undemocratic" and “a great abdication”, adding:
“We’re in a place where the politicians aren’t necessarily representing the will of the people in terms of not sitting. They all have mandates, they should be doing their job. It’s a terrible, terrible failure of leadership in that the lack of leadership is affecting people in their day-to-day lives."
He added: "One of the most toxic aspects of it is that it is consistently reinforcing that the electorate is redundant.
"I think it’s teaching the electorate that voting isn’t working which is really dangerous because this is how we get ourselves out of messes – the communities talk about it, think about it, and then they vote with their feet and that’s democracy. But, you know, democracy doesn’t work here because at any stage, that mandate could be pulled.”
On the subject of a potential border poll on a united Ireland, O'Hara said he thinks there is “a lot of work to be done” in order to establish “the things that our communities value and how those things can be shared and appreciated, interchangeably between the communities”.
Mr O'Hara has added his voice to a growing number of high-profile Irish actors who have used their position to speak out against the ongoing political deadlock.
Last month, Cork-born Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney condemned the lack of political leadership here during her acceptance speech for best female performance in a comedy programme at the Baftas.
She said: “To the people in Derry, thank you for taking me into your hearts and your living rooms. I am daily impressed with how you encompass the spirit of compromise and resilience despite the indignities, ignorance and stupidity of your so-called leaders in Dublin, Stormont, and Westminster.
“In the words of my beloved Sister Michael, ‘it’s time they started to wise up’.”
Oscar-nominee Liam Neeson was even more blunt in his assessment of the north's ongoing lack of political leadership, calling on MLAs to "get back to work, for God's sake" during an appearance on RTÉ's Late Late Show back in March.
The Ballymena-born star added, "you are drawing a salary. Get back to work, represent the people, all the people," while on the subject of the DUP's objections to the Northern Ireland Protocol, he said: "there's a part of you wants to say 'come on for God's sake, we are talking about sausages here'."
Last year, Co Down born actor Jamie Dornan described politics in the north as "a shambles."
"Politics here has always been a shambles and it will continue to be for a long time, sadly," he told PA news.
"It's so archaic, the way that they talk, and they talk, in the same sentences they've been talking about for 50 years, and they're not the conversations we should be having. And it's ultimately really damaging."
