The British government could consider giving the Northern Ireland Assembly a role which just falls short of full blown devolution, a former Stormont minister suggested today.

A four-member commission to monitor paramilitary ceasefires is a “sticking plaster solution” to keep the Good Friday Agreement intact, an MP said tonight.

The Democratic Unionist Party has claimed political bureaucracy is costing half a billion pounds in Northern Ireland every year.

The Democratic Unionist Party is poised to become the dominant force in pro-union politics, its Deputy Leader Peter Robinson claims.

Police in Northern Ireland were today hunting for the killers of a 26-year-old Catholic man in a loyalist housing estate in Co Derry.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair will meet the Democratic Unionists after Downing Street talks next week involving the other Northern Ireland parties, it was confirmed today.