53, Dromore, Omagh, Co Tyrone

`Peace has had no effect at all for me, although I would say that it's had an effect on the social life in Belfast and the provincial towns, there's more people coming into them. It hasn't affected the employment front. The property developments were going on before the peace really started. It's had no effect on the economy of Northern Ireland, we're living in a war economy. The one difference with peace - you miss the army checkpoints, you get used to them. They were good for an argument. If you were in bad form, you could take it out on them boys.

"Trimble and Mallon, I would say they're kind of amateurish when it comes to negotiating jobs and all that because they have no experience of it, have they? The North needs the expertise of the southern Irish politicians and their negotiating skills with the Europeans, we need that and we need the cross-border bodies.

"The politicians here are more or less parochial. We haven't the calibre of politician to run the place. I call them backstreet corner boys. They're like the Russians at the moment - they're lost, they have to fend for themselves. We're living in a sectarian state and there's no argument about that. The average business man on the street, he's nobody to represent him, honestly he hasn't, nobody. It would be impossible to get a middle ground party in Northern Ireland - it's a built-in bigotry.