BY RONAN MCSHERRY

FORMER Mid-Ulster MP Bernadette McAliskey has launched a scathing attack on the political agreement.

As Sinn Féin, the DUP and the other parties prepare to go back into power-sharing government next Tuesday, the former MP said that peace has been bought in the North by "perjury, fraud, corruption, cheating and lying".

She is on record as being a leading critic of the Good Friday Agreement.

Speaking at the Cúirt forum in Galway last weekend, she asked, "In what sane, civilised community would anyone be suggesting that the three male groupings involved in several decades of conflict now make up the police force?"

Mrs McAliskey, who was elected to the British parliament in 1969 when she was 21, described how she and her husband Michael had decided not to move house after they survived an assassination attempt at their home close to Coalisland in 1981.

She told the audience, "Now I would walk away from the North in the morning and clean the dust of my feet."

Along with award-winning Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell she was equally scathing about the media which only reported the "agreed truth".

Mrs McAliskey said what she did not like about the media was the "total egotistical arrogance," and the private ownership by "self-important greedy people who think they are guardians of society".

She added the broadside that the owners are "well paid and semi-illiterate".

"The media thinks that if you are not within its sights, you don't exist," she said. But it was "surprising how much you can get away with when they are not looking at you."

She added that the 'new outside' in Ireland was the immigrants. Referring to the behaviour of many Irish employers she said that it was, "just as well that no one really believes in hell, or they'd roast in it for what they are doing."

The outspoken community activist is currently co-ordinator of the Dungannon-based organisation, STEP (South Tyrone Empowerment Programme) who run a Migrant Worker Support Project.