‘Consider who your friends are’

THE Irish Government needs to ‘think again about who their friends really are’ in the countdown to Brexit, former Northern first minister David Trimble has warned.

Despite indications of support for the Republic amid the ongoing divorce talks, the Conservative peer argued the EU ‘does not have a good record in looking after small countries’.

Mr Trimble, who was instrumental in securing the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, also claimed the improved relations seen in the wake of the historic peace deal were now being threatened by Brussels and Dublin.

The former Ulster Unionist Party leader made his comments during a debate in the UK’s House of Lords on the implications of Brexit for the agreement, which also heard accusations that the border issue was ‘cynically’ being used to keep the UK within the bloc.

Mr Trimble said ‘a good and new relationship came into existence’ between Dublin and Belfast, and between the UK and the Republic, following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

He added: ‘That is now being threatened and it’s being threatened not by us in Northern Ireland, but it’s being threatened by Brussels and Dublin. Particularly folk in Dublin, they need to think again about who their friends really are. I know the EU are hinting to them or saying to them that they will look after them, but the EU does not have a good record in looking after small countries and I think Dublin should take that on board.’

However, Democratic Unionist Party peer Wallace Browne rejected claims that Brexit would see the Good Friday Agreement ‘torn up, destroyed and made redundant’, leading to a renewal of violence.

He argued there were solutions to the border issue, ‘provided there is a mature approach and a willingness on all sides to examine them’.