What you interpreted as reassuring was in fact the very opposite. The DUP are a bunch of shameless political whores. So by payment I mean payment: they would ask for even more government money to be spent on Northern Ireland. Perhaps a new road for every tricky vote or a giant statue of Ian Paisley in the middle of Ballymena.
Fair enough. What I read was some chatter about getting their income tax rate as low as Ireland's to compete, which has a certain facial reasonableness, but would be difficult to grant to them. As soon as the UK has different income tax rates for different places, it seems to me that things start to fall apart.
The thing to keep in mind about Northern Ireland is that with the devolved government, Stormont has control over most of the government services: healthcare, education, transportation, etc., but Westminster has the taxation power. The result is that "representing Northern Ireland's interests" means getting Westminster to appropriate as much money as possible. It makes for an interesting quirk to NI politics.
