Lord Empey:

There was never a large majority of unionists in favour of the Good Friday Agreement in the first place. There were about 274,000 votes against the agreement, and while they would not all have been unionists, the vast majority of them would have been and that is a substantial cohort. We reckon we had a majority of unionists in favour of the Good Friday Agreement but it was not a big majority. I agree with the assumption that support has waned, and the reason for that is that people see the protocol, as it currently operates, as changing the status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. There is a problem, therefore. The letter of the agreement may not have been breached with regard to this changing of status, but as Mr. Hazzard knows, the choice was either to join a united Ireland or stay in the UK and people read into this that they would not get their status changed without the principle of consent. While the letter of the agreement may not have been broken, the spirit of it probably has been broken and that is one of the reasons for the support waning, added to the fact that Stormont has been so erratic in its operation. That has also made people think about whether Stormont is waste of time and if these people cannot get their act together and so on. Those are the principal reasons support for the Good Friday Agreement has waned among unionists. Stormont has been out of operation for four of the past five years so people have lost faith in it.

There is supposed to be a policy for dealing with paramilitaries but the absence of the institutions means it is not really being driven politically. There is a huge gap there and this is a gap that has been around for a while. The other fundamental point I would make is that, if there is a political vacuum, we know from past experience it will be filled. Elements of that can be seen to have appeared in recent weeks in particular, and these people are only too willing to fill that vacuum. That is a major mistake.