A prominent criminal barrister and sports pundit has claimed that the “tremendous consensus” that once existed around the Good Friday Agreement has gone, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

Joe Brolly made the remarks in an interview which will be broadcast on UTV at 10.45pm.

Mr Brolly attributes the breakdown of confidence in Northern Ireland politics and society to “contempt and disdain” shown by the DUP.

He told UTV: “If you look, for example, at the ones who should have been building confidence, who could have built confidence, Peter Robinson tried it and he was held back, he wasn’t allowed to do it.

“But you look at the DUP conferences, how could you have any confidence whenever it is this constant sort of contempt and disdain?

“And you think to yourself, ’what a pity, you know, things could have been a lot different here’.”

Mr Brolly added: “The reason that the Northern Ireland society is now not going to work – because there was a time after the Good Friday Agreement, there was a tremendous consensus around it and there was a time that the Catholic middle classes, the really important ones, would have bought into a Northern Ireland society, there was a chance for that. I think, I sincerely believe that, it is completely gone.”

Mr Brolly, as well as being a former GAA player and popular sports analyst, is a practising barrister known for defending Irish republicans.