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The new leader of the DUP Edwin Poots has described his relationship with the Government as “really, really bad” as he criticised Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney.
The North’s Minister for Agriculture was confirmed as the party leader at a meeting on Thursday evening in Belfast of the party’s 130-strong Executive.
The meeting revealed the extent of the divisions within the DUP, with the outgoing leader Arlene Foster as well other senior figures including the MPs Jeffrey Donaldson, Gavin Robinson, Diane Dodds and Gregory Campbell leaving before Mr Poots made his inaugural speech as leader.
At the meeting Mr Poots said he has respect for Taoiseach Micheál Martin, but took aim at Mr Varadkar and Mr Coveney.
He appears to have taken issue with an incident from 2018, in which Mr Varadkar brought a copy of The Irish Times to a European Council meeting in Brussels, to highlight his concerns over the Border issue.
The front page story was about an IRA bombing of a Border customs post in 1972 that left nine people dead.
Asked about his relationship with Dublin following his ratification as leader, Edwin Poots replied: “I would say that I have respect for Micheál Martin.
“But I have to say that for Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney, who took photographs of blown up border posts to impose upon Northern Ireland people the harshest form of customs and an internal market that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, that was quite frankly disgraceful.
“They are going to starve Northern Ireland people of medicines no less, cancer drugs and other materials, such as the food that’s on our table.
“And I say that’s a shame on the Irish government that they (did) that, and that belongs to Fine Gael, under the leadership of Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney.
“So relationships are really, really bad for the Irish government as a consequence.”–PA