Simon Sweeney and Anna Corne dispute David Trimble’s suggestion that the Irish government is at fault with its stance on the post-Brexit border; Guthrie McKie hopes voters will punish the DUP for supporting an unpopular government

David Trimble’s suggestion that the Irish government is destabilising the Good Friday agreement is absurd (Dublin stance on post-Brexit border could provoke loyalist paramilitaries, says Trimble, 7 April).

Dublin supports the EU position of allowing Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union and the single market in the event of there being no viable alternative means to avoid a hard border in Ireland. This position was agreed by the UK government, which Trimble supports, in December 2017. He and his pro-Brexit friends have not yet come up with an alternative.

Trimble accuses Dublin of inciting a return to unionist paramilitary violence. Even if many leave voters failed to appreciate or care about destabilising the fragile peace in Northern Ireland, Trimble and all Ulster Unionists surely knew the risks. Parliament’s reckless commitment to “the people voted to leave” and interpreting this as a mandate to abandon the single market and customs union is certainly a threat to the Good Friday agreement, and a far greater one than anything Dublin has said or done since.

Trimble, in seeking to make a scapegoat of the Dublin government, quite extraordinarily, fails to understand the full implications of his having supported the leave campaign. Perhaps inadvertently his intervention might serve to alert MPs to the potentially devastating consequences of Brexit for the border, the Good Friday agreement and peace and prosperity in these islands.

Dr Simon Sweeney

University of York

• In your report concerning the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, David Trimble, we are told, said that any special deal to keep the region within Europe would destroy a key tenet of the agreement that there would no constitutional change without majority consent in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland’s voters voted in the 2016 EU referendum to remain in the EU: is David Trimble concerned by the constitutional change that Brexit is forcing upon Northern Ireland without majority consent there?

Anna Corne

Edinburgh

• Martin Kettle (Britain is closer to Ireland than ever. We must not forget why, 5 April) is right to point out the dangers to the Good Friday agreement of the current political impasse in Belfast. One can only hope that the Northern Irish voters at the next election will punish the Democratic Unionist party for their support of an unpopular government (as voters did to the Liberal Democrats for their coalition with the Tories).

Guthrie McKie

London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters