“IF YOU had told a person 20 years ago that my portrait would hang in Stormont and everybody from all the parties would be there, unarmed and in peace, you wouldn’t believed it. But it has happened and it needs to happen more and more. Because we all have to live together.”
The audience applauded Lord Bannside, formerly known as the Rev Ian Paisley, as the drapes fell from the portrait of the man-of-wrath turned first minister who led his Democratic Unionist Party into an agreement with Sinn Féin.
Revealed was a sincere image of the senior Paisley, in a soft hat and scarf, by artist David Nolan. This was not the slick and dark-haired firebrand from the 1960s, but the ageing, transformed power-sharer.
The close portrait, taken from an image by photographer Paul McErlean, invites an investigation of the inner Paisley for clues as to what brought about the monumental change.
It will hang close to the proud image of former speaker Lord Alderdice and a silently defiant and slightly rumpled Séamus Mallon. Three more diverse characters would be hard to imagine. Other works of former first and deputy first ministers and speakers are awaited.
Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and others from the republican benches were there.
Chatting easily with them was Baroness Eileen Paisley – quiet, modest and hugely influential on the person described correctly by Speaker Willie Hay as both a man of history and a history-maker.
Like the good DUP man he is, Mr Hay described the portrait’s subject in warm and glowing terms and he recalled their long history. He “touched people by his politics and his preaching”, Mr Hay said.
Not everyone in the gallery agreed. But there was no hint of bad feeling over the details of Paisley’s long political and clerical career, spoken or unspoken.