FORMER British government minister Kate Hoey has said she would take part in an anti-Northern Ireland protocol protest in Dublin.
The former Labour Party MP, who now sits in the House of Lords, made the remarks after taking part in a rally held in Newtownards town centre on Friday night.
She was one of four speakers to address an estimated 1,000 strong crowd.
Police last night said they are reviewing footage of the protest, which included several unnotified parades.
The event took place just days after prominent north Down loyalist Jamie Bryson said a loyalists may hold a protest in Dublin next month.
Speaking after the rally the former MP said she would be prepared to take part.
"If there's a peaceful protest in Dublin of course I would go but I do want to see if we can get our own government to see sense first," she said.
Asked if she believed that protests could influence Europe she referred to a bus set a alight during rising tensions in the Shankill Road area in April and said she understood the mindset of some loyalists.
"I am more concerned really about our own government," she said.
"But I mean there have been lots of these kind of peaceful protests.
"As you know the media aren't interested unless there's violence.
"That bus being burned got all over Europe and that started the make the EU start listening and thinking, now, I don't want that, but you can understand a young active sort of loyalist, who just sort of thinks, well hang on, why is it that Sinn Féin get everything."
Earlier in the evening Ms Hoey turned her anger on the Alliance Party.
"Now I can understand the republican party and I can understand the nationalist SDLP for wanting to make the protocol the issue that helps to further their political aims," she said.
"What I cannot understand is why the Alliance Party, the party that was meant to be even handed, why the Alliance Party want to rigorously, rigorously implement the protocol.
"And I would say that they have shown....what they believe they have said to be false, when it comes to the crunch, when it comes to the crunch the Alliance Party will always support those who want to destroy the union."
A spokeswoman for the Alliance Party last night said it has "plenty of experience of ill-informed attacks from extremists on both sides".
During the rally TUV leader Jim Allister urged any new DUP leader to collapse the Stormont institutions until issues around the protocol are resolved.
"What do we now need to do? What needs to be done in Stormont is the new DUP leader needs to find a backbone, and he needs to resign the first minister," he said.
"He needs to say to the British prime minister, there will be no first minister so long as there is a protocol."
Addressing the rally Mr Bryson said loyalists' "British identity meant more than any constitutional principle".
"That should come as no surprise, because Parliament sought to subjugate Ulster in 1912, and that's why Edward Carson raised an army," he said.
A banner carried during the protest included a picture of the Clyde Valley, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and the words 'Dublin's Choice - peace or protocol'. The Clyde Valley ship was used to help smuggle UVF weapons into Ireland in 1914.
In a statement the Ards and North Down Loyalist Collective, which represents all the loyalist groupings in the area, said: "If those in power do not listen, the message will grow louder.”
