Ulster Unionist East Antrim MLA, Roy Beggs has called on Sammy Wilson MP and his colleagues to apologise for agreeing to a border in the Irish Sea.

Mr Beggs said:

“Sammy Wilson and his colleagues should show some humility and apologise for their role in getting Northern Ireland into the economic and constitutional mess it is in today through Boris Johnson`s terrible Brexit deal which threatens to dismantle the Union by putting a border in the Irish Sea.

“In Friday`s News Letter Sammy Wilson claimed ‘once again the DUP has had to use its parliamentary influence to deliver two blows to the Prime Minister`s hopes of putting through a deal which less than a year ago he himself stated he would never countenance.’ Yet it was only a year ago at the DUP Party Conference that the DUP Leader Arlene Foster MLA who said ‘we will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations.’

“Days later that was followed by Sammy Wilson telling the Guardian newspaper ‘they have to recognise that if this is about treating Northern Ireland different, or leaving us half in the EU, dragging along regulations which change in Dublin, it’s not on.’

“Not only did Boris Johnson go back on his word, but so did the DUP. They claimed that they would never countenance a regulatory border in the Irish Sea yet they did just that when they completed a U-turn of monumental proportions which Arlene Foster endorsed on the 2 October 2019 as ‘a serious and sensible way forward.’ It was that huge strategic error which Boris Johnson then seized upon to extend the DUP`s regulatory border into a customs border. Yes Boris Johnson is absolutely complicit in this terrible deal for Northern Ireland, but so are the DUP for clearing the way for him to do so. For that they should apologise.”