DUP member Emma Little-Pengelly faces tough time from rivals and audience on five-person Good Friday Agreement panel

A number of times she was on the receiving end of extended applause for her fellow panellists as they criticised her comments, and the DUP position at large, when it comes to boycotting Stormont.

The DUP shows no signs of giving up its boycott in protest at the Protocol and the Windsor Framework, which it argues distances the Province from the mainland UK.

Mrs Little-Pengelly said that at the heart of the 1998 agreement – which the panel debate was marking – was “the principle of inclusion”.

"It's the principle that nationalists and unionists and everybody in between should work together.

"I can't say this more clearly. You will not exclude your way out of this issue.”

She said the reason there is no Stormont right now is because the Good Friday Agreement said the Province’s place in the UK would not change without a specific referendum on the subject, yet “people felt very strongly the protocol damaged that”.

“And what we've heard repeatedly, including I have to say at time in this conference, is a demeaning and dismissing of that,” she said.

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long called for changes to the Good Friday Agreement; though she and others did not specify what they wanted to see changed exactly, there has been talk for some time about how the law could be altered to basically stop a single party blocking a government from existing.

“We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” said then-taoiseach Micheal Martin last year for example.

Mrs Long told the audience at Queen’s today: “The institutions are not just fragile but unstable... if we do not deal with the fundamental instabilities, [the Belfast Agreement] will wither away, and support for it will wither away through frustration and cynicism, and that to me would be a scandalous waste of an opportunity.

"There's nowhere else in the world where people say 'we need to change how we pay for our water services let's stop doing everything else and walk out of government until we solve that'.”

This was met with huge applause, then she turned to Mrs Little-Pengelly: “I want to reassure Emma, I do understand why unionism is uncomfortable with the Protocol and Windsor Framework.

"But I can't understand how you did not see this coming with Brexit. And that's where I'm lost.”

This was met with whooping and cheering.

"At the time, we warned that Brexit would send shockwaves through what was a very delicate ecology here in NI in terms of our politics. We were told it was 'project fear' – that we were naysayers. That we couldn't see the potential.”

Mrs Little Pengelly went on to add: "The reality is we need to have a fair deal, we need to address the issues of unionism.

"Anybody in this hall who thinks its easy to say: ‘No we need to get this right' in the face of presidents and prime ministers and pressure, and the scoffing and mocking of the DUP, I'd say this: In terms of this room, this room doesn't represent the voters that are out there.

"The voters out there speak to us on the doors all the time. I'm not hear to bow to presidents and prime ministers. I'm here to speak for the people and their genuine concerns and to try to get that resolved.”

UUP leader Doug Beattie also drew heavy applause when he said at one point: “The Belfast Agreement was the balancing of the un-balancable. It did take compromise from everybody. Not everybody got exactly what they wanted in 1998.

"And it was designed to be changed. And it will be changed, I'm in no doubt whatsoever. And it has been changed, I have to say, already.

"But we fought the last election in may on a system of government we were going to employ.

"Sinn Fein became the largest party. If they are not allowed to take their place and we're not allowed to get a government up and running now then we really are trampling all over democracy here in Northern Ireland.”

More from this reporter:

• Northern Ireland Protocol: Ex-DUP leader Arlene Foster quotes Pete Tong and Einstein as she chides Prime Ministers for letting down 'loyal British citizens'

• Jim Allister publicly rejects Rishi Sunak's gala dinner invitation but adds 'some unionists are unable to resist a five-course-meal and high-level hob-nobbing'

• DUP boycott of Stormont serves to help prove republican point about Northern Ireland being a failed state, says Sir Reg Empey