The mystery of the moving statue has resurfaced at the Parliament Buildings at Stormont.
At a press conference on Monday, the DUP leader and European election candidate, the Rev Ian Paisley, claimed there were moves afoot to relocate the monument of Lord Edward Carson to somewhere less prominent than its present position at the front of the building. A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office dismissed the claim, saying: "Every so often this hardy perennial resurfaces, but there is absolutely no truth in this story whatsoever."
However, Mr Ian Paisley jnr of the DUP was adamant yesterday that the claim was "from a reliable source and that already the civil service is drawing up a report on how and where to move the statue".
The monument was erected following the opening of the new parliament building at Stormont in 1932, and according to the Carson papers was unveiled by Lord Carson himself on his last visit to the North in 1933.
Taking the name Baron Carson of Duncairn as a compliment to his old constituency in Belfast, Edward Carson was to the fore in the successful movement in 1910 to create Northern Ireland.
The Dublin-born and -educated Lord Carson was a successful lawyer. He was appointed Irish solicitor general in 1892, the same year in which he was elected to the British House of Commons. It is widely thought that it was the thoroughness and persistence of Lord Carson's cross-examination of Oscar Wilde which was responsible for the writer's conviction on charges of homosexuality.