Violent scenes in Stormont last week will be the subject of an inquiry by the Assembly committee that oversees the management of the building.
The speaker of the house, Lord Alderdice, told the Assembly yesterday he had already received an interim report about the fracas, when pro- and anti-agreement Assembly members jostled each other after the election of Mr David Trimble and Mr Mark Durkan as First and Deputy First Ministers. Lord Alderdice said he would be passing the report to the Assembly Commission, which would make further inquiries.
"The burden of that report will be principally to ensure that our staff managed the incident appropriately as best they could and to consider, if any other incidents were to happen in the future, whether we can learn how they might best be handled," he said.
The Rev Ian Paisley called for the reports to be made available to party leaders. "I think it is only right after the accusations that have been made about certain members that we should see exactly what the officials of this House saw in the Great Hall," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Trimble and Mr Durkan faced their first ministerial question time since last week's election.
Mr Trimble described the death of a Protestant youth, Glen Branagh, in north Belfast on Sunday night as "a senseless waste of yet another life".
The youth died when a blast- bomb he was holding in contentious circumstances exploded. Police said he had been about to throw it at them, while local Protestants maintained he had been about to remove it from the area after nationalists threw it.
Mr Alban Maginness of the SDLP called for hate-crime legislation to be introduced to deal with the "deep-seated sectarianism" which caused such incidents.
"As a member for North Belfast, where we have witnessed some of the worst excesses in terms of sectarianism and hatred in this community, it is frankly quite urgent for there to be hate-crime legislation of a strong nature."
Mr Trimble, however, questioned whether such legislation was the most effective way of dealing with the immediate problems of north Belfast. "I rather suspect that the most important thing is for people who have committed the crimes to be made amenable and for the police to be supported," he said.
"Legislation takes time and the situation there north Belfast is one that does need to be dealt with urgently and effectively."