DUP MP: Alliance 'wants to exclude unionists from future government' with reforms to Good Friday Agreement

She was reacting to calls by various politicians - including Alliance leader Naomi Long -for the Good Friday Agreement to be altered so that it is harder to collapse the government.

Mrs Long had made the comments at a five-way panel talk at Queen's University Belfast on Tuesday.

She had talked about "how we move NI forward in terms of reforming our institutions".

"We've got to get over that veto politics we have, that ransom politics," Mrs Long had said.

"I've looked at the institutions and they've been tested beyond destruction at this point.

"And we know they don't function well when one party can pull down the government at will at any time.

"That is not a stable way to do government. It's not a way to do business.

"What I want is stable government. I want what was promised in Strand 1 [of the 1998 deal].

"It promised we'd govern NI together well, and we haven't done that.

"I want all parties to be in government [but] I want us to accept if one party doesn't want to be in government, they should be allowed to walk away…

"The two main parties can't do it. And I think that's wrong."

She praised the 1998 deal, adding: "But it is a foundation on which we should be ready to build. It should not be the ceiling of our ambitions."

DUP HITS BACK

DUP Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart said in response: “The Alliance Party wants to exclude unionism under a cloak of reform because they disagree with our views.

"Such a step is abandoning the core cross community element of the Belfast Agreement and its successors. Our institutions will evolve but by cross community consensus.

"Whilst Alliance’s anti-power-sharing plans may have been hailed at the QUB Belfast Agreement echo-chamber, in the real world outside the room, unionists are not going to be bullied or excluded.

"Progress in Northern Ireland has only ever been made when unionists and nationalists move forward together.

"Not for one second would nationalists be expected to tolerate the changes north-south that unionists are expected to swallow between GB and NI.

"Northern Ireland will move forward together and unionism must move forward together.”

But it was not Mrs Long alone calling for a re-writing of the 1998 deal on Wednesday.

Micheal Martin, the Republic’s foreign minister, said: “The calls for reform of the agreement – including the need to break the cycle of instability and suspension – have grown louder.

“It is clear that the political community between ‘unionist’ and ‘nationalist’ has grown, and I believe that there should be reform. But that is best achieved from a position of stability.”

And Doug Beattie, leader of the UUP, also said: “Not everybody got exactly what they wanted in 1998. And it was designed to be changed.

"And it will be changed, I'm in no doubt whatsoever. And it has been changed, I have to say, already.”

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