Responding to today’s announcement Jim Allister said:
“There is widespread scepticism within the Unionist community about this panel and there is therefore an onus upon the appointees to demonstrate that they are not mere placemen. The panel must show that they are totally independent and are prepared to face the reality of ongoing IRA criminality, regardless of its impact upon the terrorist inclusive executive.
“It is also worth asking what Unionists who sustain Sinn Fein/IRA in government will do if this panel is brave enough to expose what Republicans have been up to. Remember – in 2007 DUP manifesto said that “terrorist structures and weaponry must be removed before the bar to the Stormont Executive can be opened”. We now know that the IRA still exist, that it is armed and that it reserves the right to kill.
“Should the panel re-echo the assessment of the Chief Constable will the DUP finally acknowledge, after eight years of trying to keep a fatally flawed system on track, that they were wrong to go into government with a party which remains inextricably linked to terror?”