New Northern Ireland talks called, spurred by journalist's murder

The British and Irish governments have announced a resumption of talks to restore Northern Ireland's devolved government, spurred into ending a hiatus in dialogue of more than a year by the killing of a journalist last week.

Journalist Lyra McKee was shot dead shortly after posting a picture of the violence in Londonderry. Source: AAP

The British-run province has been without a devolved executive for more than two years since Irish nationalists Sinn Fein withdrew from the compulsory power-sharing government with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party.

But the murder last week of 29-year-old reporter Lyra McKee during rioting by militant Irish nationalists has raised pressure on the parties from voters and the two governments to re-establish the regional government that is central to Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement.

"We are leaving far too much wide open space for other kinds of voices that don't believe in democracy, that peddle hate and fear," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told a joint news conference with his co-broker of the talks, Britain's Northern Ireland minister Karen Bradley.

"People have no patience for another show of a process or talks that go on and on and on, and then in the end go nowhere. We've had enough of that. It needs to be different this time."

The talks will begin on May 7 after local elections in the province with the aim of concluding well in advance of mid-July, when annual parades often raise tensions between pro-British Protestants and Irish nationalist Catholics,

Coveney said on Friday.

At McKee's funeral on Wednesday, Roman Catholic priest Father Martin Magill received a spontaneous standing ovation when he made a direct appeal to the politicians in the church to use McKee's death as a catalyst to start talking again.

"There are moments in politics when things change. I think the emotion of the last week has given a spark to the process," Coveney said. "We'd be very foolish if we allowed that time to pass."

A mourner wearing a Hogwarts scarf holds the order of service for the funeral for journalist Lyra McKee at St Annes Cathedral on April 24. Source: Getty Images Europe

Attempts to find a compromise have been complicated by poor relations between Sinn Fein and the DUP, the DUP's role in propping up May's minority government in London, and the impact on the region of Britain's planned exit from the European Union.

The talks most recently collapsed in February last year when Sinn Fein said they had reached an accommodation with the leadership of the DUP that put an agreement within reach but that the DUP failed to close the deal and collapsed the talks.

Both sides welcomed the talks but neither has shown much willingness to budge in recent days, despite the pressure.