TUV attacks 'spin' from church leaders welcoming the fact Stormont is up and running again

The party suggested that the statement might as well have come directly from the Northern Ireland Office, which has long taken the view that a restored Stormont is a must.

The joint church statement was signed by the leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland, the Presbyterian Church, Church of Ireland, and Methodist Church, as well as the president of the Irish Council of Churches – an umbrella group encompassing all the above churches, and more.

Issued as a New Year's message, it read: "In Northern Ireland we are grateful to have witnessed the restoration of devolved government in the last year, with the Executive and the Assembly sitting once more at Stormont. To govern means making decisions and often difficult choices.”

The restoration of Stormont was a controversial move on the part of the DUP in January 2024, because some unionists remained unsatisfied with the ongoing existence of the Irish Sea border under the Protocol.

Then-leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson argued the party had secured enough concessions (in the form of the Safeguarding the Union deal) to warrant the move – something what was and remains strongly opposed by the TUV, which argues that Northern Ireland remains a "colony" of the EU under the deal.

In response to the church joint statement, the TUV said: “In light of the fact that the Northern Ireland Office has been using the four main churches as subcontractors for their press work since at least the 1980s there is nothing terribly surprising in this statement.

"For that reason alone one suspects that few will pay any attention to what they have to say.

"However, if one were to look at the substance of the message it will be noted that they say that to govern is to take responsibility and make difficult choices.

"The reality is that just a few weeks ago the majority of MLAs voted to shirk that responsibility and surrender control of 300 areas of law to people no one in Northern Ireland votes for."

This is a reference to the vote on December 10 in the Assembly, which voted 48 to 36 to continue the status quo regarding trade arrangements for at least another four years.

The chamber was split along the lines of unionists who opposed the plan, and the SDLP, Alliance and Sinn Fein who supported it.

The TUV concluded: "Regardless of what the church leaders say, there are many who see through the spin and recognise the fact that disenfranchising the younger generation by taking away the rights their parents had to influence the laws to which they are subject by way of elections does not represent progress."