There has been too much muddled meddling with Belfast Agreement by those who never supported it anyway

(Mandatory coalition was only ever a transitory fix, Nov. 20).

He won’t get away with becoming an ‘ordinary’ member of the general public, however. Nobody who has occupied high political office ever gets to claim back such a precious commodity as ordinariness!

I want to comment on his reference to the use of vetoes. The DUP in the Executive deployed their ‘veto’ twice in recent days to stop the Executive from endorsing tighter restrictions requested by the Health Minister.

Robin Swann proposed these measures to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. Fast forward one week and the DUP agreed to even tighter restrictions than were on the table the week before! No veto deployed. How is this to be explained?

The Petition of Concern mechanism (a form of veto) was designed to give confidence to a divided community, that the rights and interests of one section of the community could not be overridden by the other.

However, the mechanism has been severely abused. In the 2011-2016 Assembly, the DUP deployed it 86 times! I think the UUP used it twice, SDLP and SF 29 times.

It was even deployed to prevent a committee at Stormont from sanctioning a DUP minister; certainly, never the intention of the Petition of Concern.

We need to take great care what we do about this. There have been too many arbitrary changes to the Belfast Agreement, primarily advanced from those who didn’t negotiate it or support it, and as we can see from recent events Stormont is getting worse, not better.

On-the-hoof proposals rarely work, rarely to the advantage of unionism. The ill-thought-through manner that Brexit was handled is another example where the outcome was never intended. Who would have believed that the border would be moved from Newry to Larne?

If we need changes, lets take our time and work out the pitfalls before launching into another mess that future generations will have to clear up.

Lord Empey, UUP leader, 2005-2010

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