THE Irish Government should have severed links completely with Sinn Fein to show the party there was "a price to pay" for IRA violence, according to Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party.
"There was an opportunity to send a message around the world that Sinn Fein need to make moves to make themselves acceptable," Mr Ervine said.
"It is not for the world to change its position to make itself acceptable to Sinn Fein, it should be the other way round. I'm a little disappointed with the Irish Government."
Asked what he would have liked Dublin to do, Mr Ervine said: "I think the Irish Government should have broken off links. They should have said, `There is a price to pay'."
The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, said he had not studied the Government's position in detail: "I don't see what relationship they could have with Sinn Fein in view of the way that Sinn Fein IRA are behaving.
The leader of the UK Unionist Party, Mr Robert McCartney, asked if anyone was surprised at the Government's stance.
Mr Gary McMichael of the Ulster Democratic Party said the IRA was intent on destroying the peace process. "The only people who have kept this process alive are loyalists."
He said that if the loyalists had responded to the IRA bombing at Canary Wharf, there would no longer be a peace process. "Therefore we have to consider whether the IRA are going to be allowed to dictate the agenda and destroy the hopes and aspirations of all the people of Northern Ireland."
Mr McMichael and a party colleague, Mr John White, spent two hours with loyalist prisoners in the Maze prison yesterday.
"A number of points became very clear to us that the process is at a critical juncture that there's a massive degree of frustration at the IRA's impunity when engaged in a military campaign and the threat which it poses, quite deliberately in our view, to the entire peace process and, thirdly, the lack of recognition for the positive and constructive role which the loyalist prisoners have played in this process." He said movement on loyalist prisoners had been stopped because of the actions of the IRA.
"I think this is a very negative signal at a time when loyalists are showing a degree of commitment which is unparalleled in this peace process.