DUP challenged to ensure consequences for ‘First Minister of lawlessness’

The DUP has been challenged to ensure consequences for Northern Ireland’s “First Minister of lawlessness”.

TUV leader Jim Allister said the DUP should withdraw its deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, to “ensure political consequences for law breaking”.

Mr Allister said the “First Minister of lawlessness says, ‘We’re above the law, the law does not apply to us, we do not accept the law'”.

Michelle O’Neill has said she is standing by the residents of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, and “it’s up to all of us to collectively and unequivocally stand with the Garvaghy Road residents and to say no to a sectarian, unwanted march”.

The Drumcree parade stand-off has entered its second week, with another legal challenge to be heard later.

The impasse started after the Parades Commission said an Orange Order parade could complete its traditional route along the Garvaghy Road for the first time in almost 30 years.

However the parade has not taken place because police said they could not facilitate it with the crowds gathered on the Garvaghy Road in opposition.

Ms O’Neill and other ministers and elected representatives from Sinn Féin, the SDLP and People Before Profit have been criticised for being present on the Garvaghy Road.

The Garvaghy Road residents are taking further legal action against the Parades Commission determination at the Court of Appeal in Belfast on Monday.

The First Minister is scheduled to face an urgent oral question from DUP MLA Phillip Brett on Monday afternoon.

Orangemen at a police barricade close to Drumcree Church (Brian Lawless/PA)

PA Wire

Speaking to the media at Parliament Buildings on Monday morning, Mr Allister claimed there had been a “full-scale greening of the rule of law by those who have deliberately and provocatively breached not just the ruling of the Parades Commission but the Court of Appeal”.

He accused Sinn Féin of an “open, deliberate, conscious defiance of the rule of law”.

“Sinn Féin ministers have breached the law and seem indifferent as to whether they keep the law or break the law,” he said.

“So long as the DUP, who put Sinn Féin into government, sustain them in government, then when Michelle O’Neill and others get the knock on the door from police, if they do, they effectively have in their hand a character reference from the DUP that they are fit to govern by virtue of the fact they have sustained them there.

“The question for the DUP, and other unionists in the Executive, is do they think Sinn Féin are fit to govern, because if they don’t, the answer lies in their own hand, the answer lies in reversing the process that put them there in the first place by resigning their deputy First Minister and demonstrating that there are consequences for breaking the law.”