Alliance MP Sorcha Eastwood has criticised the UK Government's decision to appoint an independent expert to assess the need for engagement with paramilitary groups, arguing that the government should instead directly order them to disband.

"Paramilitarism is a poison in our society," said Lagan Valley MP Ms. Eastwood. "It continues to offer nothing to communities other than creating more victims and misery and exerting coercive control over some of the most vulnerable in our community."

She stated that paramilitary groups and their legacy structures need to be dismantled and their crimes tackled robustly. "We are now 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement – it is well beyond time those engaged in paramilitarism left the stage," she said.

Ms. Eastwood argued that many paramilitary groups have transitioned into organised crime gangs, recruiting and exploiting young people, dealing drugs, extorting businesses, and engaging in loan sharking.

She criticised the appointment of an "interlocutor," saying it "flies in the face" of work done by the Executive's programme on paramilitary and organised crime and "gives them a credibility and legitimacy which is not extended, and rightly so, to any other criminal gangs."

"Paramilitaries do not need to be negotiated with, encouraged or offered inducements to get off the backs of the community," she stated. "The UK Government needs to realise this and instead of appointing a go between, tell these illegal groups they should disband immediately and remind them failure to do so will result in them continuing to face the full force of the law."