Pay up, England!

i am from northern ireland and i deplore the DUP. i am perpetually saddened that the party is able to stay in power by playing on the fear of change within communities, and i am embarrassed that people from outside ni will mistakenly believe we are a population of homophobes and bigots. We are none of these things.

However, i am also dismayed that the extra funding being promised to northern ireland as a result of the DUP’s deal with the Tories is being used as a stick to beat us with.

it is a bribe by any other name, but these are much-needed and longoverdue funds. northern ireland is the forgotten child of the UK.

Many english people know little of it, nor care.

in the week after the general election i listened with bemusement to english outrage that such a party as the DUP could have an input into the running of ‘this country’, knowing that you never once cared that it has been involved in running northern ireland for decades.

northern ireland voted to remain in the EU, but it counted for nothing because the english said so. For all your talk of ‘taking back control of our borders’ you forgot you don’t actually have any. northern ireland is the only UK country that has an EU border, and nobody has any idea how to deal with the changes following Brexit: the livelihoods lost; the turmoil of potentially returning to the border checkpoints of my youth.

For centuries the english have taken what they wanted from northern ireland. You have ignored us when we needed you, and interfered when we didn’t.

But now, finally, the english electorate has realised that northern ireland exists, and all it took was the threat of £1 billion being shifted from your pockets into ours to get your full attention.

Historically, you have wanted to keep hold of northern ireland at any cost. Well, now it’s time to pay for it.

AL CARRUTHERS, Liverpool.