The scheme was that which came to be known as county option with a time limit.

Any county in Ulster, including the cities of Belfast and Derry, was to be given the right to vote itself out of the Home Rule jurisdiction, on a requisition signed by a specified proportion of its parliamentary electorate, for a period of six years.
Mr.Bonar Law said at once, on behalf of the Unionist Party, that apart from all other objections to the Government scheme, and they were many, the time limit for exclusion made the whole proposal a mockery.

All that it meant was that when the preparations in Ulster for resistance to Home Rule had been got rid of--for it would be practically impossible to keep them in full swing for six years--Ulster should then be compelled to submit to the very thing to which she refused to submit now.

Carson described the proposal as a "sentence of death with a stay of execution for six years." He noted with satisfaction indeed the admission of the principle of exclusion, but expressed his conviction that the time limit had been introduced merely in order to make it impossible for Ulster to accept.

Ulster wanted the question settled once for all, so that she might turn her attention from politics to her ordinary business.