‘We’ll never implement an Irish Language Act and Sinn Féin’s wish list is toilet paper’

Speaking at the last DUP party conference before the Westminster elections next year, the East Londonderry MLA said his party would treat Sinn Féin’s “entire wish list as no more than toilet paper.”

It follows Mr Campbell’s controversial address to the Principal Deputy Speaker, Mitchel McLaughlin, at Stormont last month when his “Curry my yogurt can coca coal yer” remark, an apparent parody of “Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle,” the Irish rendering of “Thank you, chair/speaker,” earned him a one day ban from the Assembly.

On Saturday Mr Campbell told his party colleagues: “On behalf of our party let me say clearly, and slowly so that Caitríona Ruane and Gerry Adams understand, we will never agree to an Irish language Act at Stormont and we will treat their entire wish list as no more than toilet paper. They better get used to it.

“Mr Chairman, we want to make progress for the people in Northern Ireland but we would be greatly assisted in that if other parties started to focus on the things that matter to folk.

“Working to achieve sensible welfare reform, building our economic recovery, developing our health and education services, respecting our culture and tradition, cutting senseless bureaucracy and red tape. Let us focus on what can be achieved rather than chasing what cannot.

“In less than six months we will be nearing the end of this particular election campaign. Let us go forward together in a spirit of confidence, in a mood of humility determined to secure a mandate that can be used to help the people that we serve.”

Mr Campbell has previously made it clear that he would support legislation for minority languages but not for one single language, namely Irish.