Middle-class Catholics have lost faith in Northern Ireland’s post-Good Friday Agreement shared society, sports pundit Joe Brolly has claimed.
DUP “contempt and disdain” is partly responsible for the failure to fulfil the promise of 1998, the GAA pundit and lawyer said, in an interview to be screened on UTV this week.
Mr Brolly said: “If you look, for example, at the ones who should have been building confidence, who could have built confidence, Peter Robinson tried it and he was held back, he wasn’t allowed to do it.
“But you look at the DUP conferences, how could you have any confidence whenever it is this constant sort of contempt and disdain, and you think to yourself, ‘what a pity, you know, things could have been a lot different here’?”
However, in 2014, the party’s East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell was barred from addressing the Stormont Assembly for a day after failing to apologise for a parody of the expression for “thank you”, go raibh maith agat.
A row developed after he began his address to the devolved parliament with: “Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer”.