Mr. Thomas Quigley:

The SPAD Bill he introduced was voted on in the Executive. They won that vote, so now any ex-prisoner cannot be an adviser to the Government. No one who has been in prison can be nominated as an adviser for any part of Government or any political party. If Jim Allister's last Bill had succeeded, we would have been excluded from any board whatsoever, including public boards, educational boards and health boards. There are all those aspects to it and that is not the end of Jim Allister's campaign. He will come up with something else. He has been very vocal on the pensions campaign and more legislation is now being put in place to exclude ex-prisoners from those pension schemes. We did research in 1998 and found that more than three quarters of the prisoners had either been injured themselves, had family members injured or had lost relatives or close family. They were victims of the conflict but their victimhood is seen as far less or of no value in the ongoing war about the hierarchy of victims. The latest victory for unionism, basically, has been that ex-prisoners are excluded from the pension scheme. That will not stop. Jim Allister will not stop his campaigns. Unionists, especially those within the DUP, will not stop with their campaigns.

At this very moment, there are unionists standing outside a court in Belfast complaining about a man being brought to court because he shot a disabled man in the back as he ran away. If that had been anyone else except a young man from a Catholic background, Carla Lockhart would not be standing there and the DUP would not be standing there. If that was for any other type of killing, she would not be standing there. That is the type of campaign that is ongoing here. It is a continuation of the war by other means. It is coming from people within the DUP and within the TUV who were against the Good Friday Agreement in the main. Things are not getting better and we have no evidence that there has been any sort of softening of the attitude of unionists like Jim Allister or elements of the DUP.