BARONESS Paisley has praised the Republic's Easter Rising commemorations.
The widow of former First Minister and DUP leader Ian Paisley said the state was entitled to mark that period in its history.
"I did follow it and I thought it was done very well," she told the News Letter.
"The whole thing is part of their history - 100 years is a red letter day in the history of any country."
Baroness Paisley added that she did not agree with the 1916 Rising, which is widely held to have precipitated the Republic's eventual independence.
"It was a dreadful war and a terrible cruelty," she said.
"It did cause a lot of damage as far as that goes, but they are entitled to remember it."
Current DUP leader Arlene Foster has also been critical of the Rising and those who led it.
The First Minister declined to attend the Dublin commemorations because she said she viewed the rebellion as "a violent act that killed many hundreds of Irish people" - instead attending a Church of Ireland event in the capital last month.
She claimed that rather than being, in the words of President Michael D Higgins, "advanced thinkers, selfless women and men, who took all the risks to ensure that the children of Ireland would, in the future live in freedom", a lot of the leaders were "egotistical (and) were doing it to bring glory upon themselves".
"They had no democratic backing. I don't see them as selfless individuals at all," she told the Irish Times.
She added that "for a lot of us, the legacy of 1916 has been continued violence".
