RELATIONS between the DUP and Irish government deteriorated further last night amid the continuing fall-out over the breakdown of Brexit border talks.
DUP leader Arlene Foster claimed her party only saw the text of a planned deal between the British government and EU on Monday morning, hours before it was due to be signed off in Brussels.
She said they had been asking to see it for five weeks and it came as "a big shock".
Remarkably, the former first minister also said that British negotiators indicated it was the Irish government that prevented the DUP from being shown a copy.
Dublin swiftly rejected Ms Foster's claim, saying it had "no role whatsoever in the negotiations conducted by the British government".
"It therefore had no involvement in any decision on which documents should go to the DUP," the government said.
Mrs Foster also claimed there had been "quite an aggressive agenda coming from Dublin recently", while deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the Republic had sought to use a veto over the Brexit process in a "reckless and dangerous way which is putting at risk years of good Anglo-Irish relations".
Assembly member Christopher Stalford also invoked anger over the Anglo-Irish Agreement three decades earlier, tweeting: "Varadker (sic) and Coveney thought they could pull a Garret Fitzgerald circa November 1985 on us. Guess again lads."
In a pointed rebuff to the party, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil that he would listen to "all political parties in Northern Ireland and recognise that the majority did not vote to leave the European Union".
"The negotiations are not involving one or any political party. This agreement, if we come to it, will not be involving one political party to the exclusion of others."
Talks between British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker broke up without agreement on Monday after the DUP intervened to veto a deal on the Irish border which would pave the way for wider trade talks to begin.
A leaked text had suggested Britain conceded that the north could maintain 'regulatory alignment' with the Republic, allowing the continuation of a soft border.
Mrs Foster, whose party's 10 MPs are propping up the Tory administration, has insisted it will not allow any regulatory divergence which differentiates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Mrs May is due to return to Brussels later this week in an attempt to salvage a deal.
