The ‘hostility to unionist considerations should finish’, DUP North Antrim MP Ian Paisley has informed the Parliamentary Meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Addressing the Council, Mr Paisley mentioned that the query marks over the way forward for devolution in Northern Eire will live on for so long as Brussels ignores the considerations of Unionists in relation to the Protocol.

Commenting after Thursday’s sitting, during which he responded to a report claiming Brexit has led to a ‘backsliding’ on human rights protections in Northern Eire, Mr Paisley mentioned: “There was no reversal of human rights in Northern Eire.

“The European Conference was enshrined in Northern Eire legislation by Sections 6 and 24 of the 1998 Act. This doesn’t depend upon the Human Rights Act or being a member of the European Union. There may be additionally no absolute dedication to a Northern Eire Invoice of Rights in both the Belfast Settlement or New Decade New Method and it’s clear that any settlement in any respect is to be reached by means of consensus. As well as, the Authorities’s laws on the Protocol wouldn’t alter any of its present obligations on this space.

“The authors of this report ought to settle for these info however as an alternative they’re extra keen on listening to the Sinn Fein spin and enjoying on the fears of individuals throughout Northern Eire.

“It’s placing that there’s not a single reference on this report back to the immense harm brought on by the Protocol to the cross-community consent precept that’s foundational to power-sharing. It’s as if the considerations of Unionism do not exist. The report even has the audacity to counsel that in Northern Eire ‘the overall inhabitants just isn’t actually nervous concerning the Protocol’.

“If there may be to be a foundation for steady authorities in Northern Eire sooner or later, this kind of hostility to the legit considerations of Unionism should finish. Actually we might be eager to know which Unionists, if any, the rapporteur of this report met throughout his fact-finding go to to Northern Eire.

“The Protocol doesn’t ‘respect the constitutional order of the UK’. In reality, it alters and assaults Northern Eire’s structure place in the UK. This Celebration has a mandate to hunt the restoration of our place within the UK inner market, and if essential, we are going to go to the voters and be sure that mandate is renewed.

“The DUP is dedicated to making sure these considerations can now not be considered as expendable. Until legit concern concerning the Protocol is positioned entrance and centre of the most recent spherical of talks, that course of will merely default to an echo chamber, casting the way forward for the devolved establishments additional into jeopardy.”