DUP Slams Dublin Oireachtas

A DUP attack has been launched on a special Oireachtas committee that, for the first time yesterday, was attended by MPs from Northern Ireland.

The meeting, which was boycotted by unionists, marked the first ever invovlement of any Northern Ireland-based Westminster MPs in the Republic's parliamentary affairs.

The Oireachtas committee was set up to monitor the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

The DUP's Gregory Campbell has described it as an 'irrelevant sideshow' and says MPs elected to Westminster should go there instead.

He says the establishment of the committee demonstrates an extraordinary level of arrogance on the part of the Irish Government.

The nationalist MPs yesterday welcomed the development as a further step in improving all-Ireland relations.

Northern Ireland representatives on the committee include the SDLP's South Belfast MP Alasdair McDonnell, South Down MP Eddie McGrady and Sinn Fein's Fermanagh/South Tyrone MP Michelle Gildernew and party colleague Pat Doherty, MP for west Tyrone - neither of whom have ever taken up their respective Westminster seats.

Speaking after the inaugural meeting on behalf of the SDLP, Mr McDonnell said he believed the committee would serve as a useful forum in ensuring the 1998 peace pact is fully implemented.

"I am pleased and I think it's very useful. If the meetings work and I think they can work as a tool to implement much of the Good Friday Agreement, I think it would be great,'' he said.

"We want to see the agreement taken apart piece-by-piece and fully implemented in the interests of all the people of the island.''

(BMcC)