Good Friday Agreement 'has spawned a political monster'

The Good Friday Agreement has spawned a political monster which is incapable of improving the lot of the citizens of Northern Ireland, it has been claimed.

UK Unionist leader Robert McCartney told his party's annual conference in Bangor, County Down, that the new political institutions were failing Northern Ireland.

And he accused David Trimble's Ulster Unionist of being seduced and bribed into supporting the new institutions.

Mr McCartney told UK Unionist delegates the current peace process was "a return to the application of all the policies which have failed in the past".

"It is now, however, infinitely more dangerous for the capacity of terrorism to inflict serious economic damage on the mainland, the technology to brainwash the electorate, the determination to seduce and bribe some Unionist politicians with the trappings and spoils of office and the false promise of an economic and social peace dividend, have all combined to make the easy road to Irish unity broad and inviting," he said.

The North Down MP claimed the system of devolution in Northern Ireland was designed to "neutralise the power of a democratic majority" and create transitionally political institutions which would move Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom and into the Irish Republic.

As a result, he claimed the Assembly and the Executive were both sterile and designed to stagnate while all Ireland institutions had the capacity to expand and develop.

He continued: "The impotence of the Assembly to improve the lot of its citizens is manifest. Its public expenditure on essential services is limited by the amount allotted to it by central government.

"Since the British Treasury controls both the purse strings and overall policy, the Executive function, like that of the old Stormont, is reduced in real terms to an administrative role."