Leo Varadkar makes Stormont demand: Taioseach has a big mouth says Ian Paisley, it's none of his business says Jim Allister, it's a cheek says Sammy Wilson

DUP MP Ian Paisley called the Irish premier “a big mouth” while fellow DUP MP Sammy Wilson said Mr Varadkar has “a cheek” for demanding action on Northern Ireland’s affairs.

Their comments were at odds with their party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson who said he had a “very useful” conversations with the Taoiseach during his visit to Belfast on subjects of “mutual interest and concern including cross border trade”.

Meanwhile TUV leader Jim Allister described Mr Varadkar as a “persistent interloper”.

They were speaking after the Irish premier said Northern Ireland has gone too long without devolved government and conversations about alternatives should start if the opportunity is missed this autumn.

Ian Paisley was the first to criticise Mr Varadkar. On the Stephen Nolan podcast he called him “a big mouth” adding that what he has said will “wind up the wrong people”.

Mr Paisley said: “This careless talk and threats will wind up people who are easily led and could respond in an awful way.”

In an interview with Sky News Sammy Wilson said: "It’s a cheek for the head of a government adjacent to us – a foreign government – to demand action on the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. It is nothing to do with him.

"It may be a neighbouring country but it is a country which is partly responsible for the situation in Northern Ireland because of the unreasonable demands made during the Brexit negotiations by the Irish Government, and indeed the insistence of the Irish Government, had in us following a path which led to the impasse which we have at present.”

TUV leader Jim Allister told The Nolan Show on BBC Radio Ulster: “Once more Mr Varadkar has excelled at his meddling. This is man who above all others created the current crisis by his aggressive pushing of a protocol which breached the consent principle of the Good Friday Agreement that he claims to support and he did that of course by his latent threat of a return to violence if the border went where it should be.”

He added: “Stormont is none of his business yet he persistently interlopes on this issue and meddles.

“Of course unionism is in part to blame for that because they've accepted his interloping when they should have stuck to the basics of the Belfast Agreement."

He said that unionists made a “fundamental mistake” in accepting the New Decade, New Approach deal devised by then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Julian Smith and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.

Alliance MLA Sorcha Eastwood, who was also on the show, said of Ian Paisley’s comments: “We don't need that sort of rhetoric any more.

"What is useful to note is that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson didn't come out of that meeting and say that.

"It's clear that there are people within the DUP who are holding all of us to ransom.

"That's not my problem but unfortunately the DUP has made this everyone's problem.

"Alliance has been clear from the start, we have the alternative, it's sitting there, it's reform of the institution.”