Watch: TUV man Timothy Gaston continues to clash with Alliance committee chair Paula Bradshaw - this time over his remarks to a witness

Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw, for at least the third time in recent weeks, clashed with the TUV man over comments he had made before the committee.

This latest row in the Executive Committee centred on Mr Gaston's line of questioning of a previous witness to the committee, Kellie Turtle.

Ms Turtle is head of policy at the charity Age NI.

She is active on Twitter, where she posts and reposts Age NI-related tweets as well as feminist, pro-choice, and pro-transgender activism material.

Her Twitter bio currently reads: "Policy & engagement older people. Equality & rights. Health & social care. Faith & abortion. Opinions expressed in personal not professional capacity. she/her."

She and other Age NI witnesses appeared before the committee on September 25 to answer questions.

Mr Gaston asked the Age NI witnesses in general "if an elderly person in a care home insisted they are given a bed-bath by someone of the same biological sex, would that be viewed as transphobic by Age NI?"

He was told "I don't think we'd be in a position to comment on that".

Mr Gaston followed this up by asking Ms Turtle directly: "Is your Twitter account in conflict with Age NI?"

"My personal social media has absolutely nothing to do with my professional role," she replied. "I find this line of questioning quite inappropriate."

This was met with murmurs of agreement from committee members and comments that Mr Gaston was being "ridiculous".

"Apologies if there was any offence taken," committee chairwoman Ms Bradshaw said to Ms Turtle, whilst DUP MLA Brian Kingston called upon Mr Gaston to apologise himself.

When Mr Gaston said he felt no need to withdraw his remarks, Ms Bradshaw raised her voice and said "look, look, OK, I'm going to draw a line, thank you very much" before moving on.

Revisiting this episode today, Ms Bradshaw began the committee meeting by reading a letter of complaint from the Commissioner for Older People.

Its chief executive Evelyn Hoy had written to complain that Mr Gaston had launched "a disrespectful attack" on Kellie Turtle and had shown "rudeness and bias".

The letter of complaint said Mr Gaston has the right "to hold discriminatory views" but "I wish to remind the whole committee that witnesses are in a position of less power and privilege than committee members... this was a deliberate and calculated abuse of that power differential".

Chairwoman Ms Bradshaw suggested the committee as a whole write to Age NI to apologise "for the incidents at last week's meeting".

She went on to say "any inappropriate questioning in the future will be not tolerated".

She said: "We have important work to do on this committee to support victims and survivors, those people who are marginalised, who are discriminated against, and I will not as chair of this committee allow the conduct of certain individuals to detract from our very important work."

Mr Gaston suggested that it would be "more fitting" to refer the matter to the Commissioner for Standards, rather than leaving the matter "to the soapbox of in here".

Ms Bradshaw said: "I take great exception to the use of the word 'soapbox'. And it just shows you have learned nothing from the past week from the outrage at your comments."