DUP ASSEMBLY member Nelson McCausland was ordered out of the Assembly and the Stormont precincts yesterday after he refused to retract a claim that Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams had been a senior IRA leader.
The North Belfast MLA was applauded by DUP colleagues as he left the chamber. This is the second time in four months that he was expelled from Stormont for making allegations against Mr Adams.
While Assembly speaker William Hay, himself a DUP member,ruled that the remarks made last week were unparliamentary, Mr McCausland refused to withdraw them, saying: “Mr Speaker, I do not intend to withdraw the comments because they were true and I was quoting from a book published by the IRA, which I now intend to place in the Assembly library.”
Mr Adams has been regularly described as having a senior IRA past but has always denied it.
Mr McCausland later issued a statement in which he said: “If political parties are going to demand honesty or full disclosure of historical events then they need to be prepared to apply the standards of openness and transparency to themselves that they demand of other people and organisations, including the [British] army and the security services.”