A DUP MLA has said it is “regrettable” that five party members were part of a plot to bug a private meeting that was aimed at selling Jeffrey Donaldson’s Brexit deal.
Upper Bann MLA Diane Dodds was reacting to the Belfast Telegraph’s expose on the plot, which saw loyalist Jamie Bryson tweet live updates from the supposed private meeting at Larchfield House near Lisburn last January.
‘Wiregate’, as it became known, ruined former DUP leader Donaldson’s big pitch to sell the deal he claimed removed the Irish Sea border and would ultimately pave a way for a return of the Stormont Executive.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster on Tuesday, Ms Dodds said: “I think it’s always regrettable. Private meetings are meant to be private, and I think it is always regrettable if that is the case.”
Donaldson resigned as DUP leader just two months after the meeting after being charged in connection with historical sex abuse, along with his wife Eleanor. Both deny the charges, with a trial expected in the spring.
Jeffrey Donaldson (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)
Current DUP leader Gavin Robinson later admitted that his party oversold the deal.
As part of the Wiregate plot, the senior member of the DUP who was wearing the wire was given the codename ‘John Knox’.
Donaldson, who was at the height of his powers at the time, was aiming to convince around 130 DUP executive members that his deal met the party’s ‘seven tests’ for the restoration of the Executive.
While the plot to livestream the DUP meeting on January 29 was known to all six people, only three — Bryson and two others — knew who was going to wear the wire.
When news of the bugging reached the room, shortly after the meeting started, there was a furious reaction from the Donaldson loyalists.
So too a few of the plotters, who threw suspicion off themselves by faking outrage.
Reflecting on Wiregate, Bryson said: “There was nothing sneaky about it. I sat in Jeffrey’s office in Parliament in October 2023 and said very clearly that no matter how well we had worked together in common cause, if he did a deal which fell short then I’d do anything and everything I could to oppose that and wreck it.
“Jeffrey didn’t know just how deeply his inner circle was compromised — from all levels of the party.
“The mayhem we caused via coordinated leaks and sowing confusion no doubt slowed down the deal and made it very, very hard for Jeffrey and those around him.
“The only regret I have is that the torpedo was too slow. The deal ultimately fell apart within months anyway, but I do wish we’d blown it out of the water that night in January because it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. Not even those who supported it at the time still stand over it.”