Member's statement: DUP Deflection
Member's statement by Ms Emma Sheerin on .
- MLA
- Ms Emma Sheerin
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 7 September 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- DUP Deflection
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5669607
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. Bhí tú i do chodladh ansin.
I have listened with intent this afternoon to contributions from the DUP and, indeed, broader political unionism, hoping that we would hear some positivity. Although I am not surprised, I, of course, have been disappointed. The summer is over, and I do not know whether the DUP has become lost in some sort of time warp and thinks that we are back in 1969 or 1996 or whether it has jumped forward into pantomime season, but its contributions today would give Dame Edna a run for her money. It is not fooling anybody, however. All the drama, deflection and performance is just a distraction from what the DUP really does not want us all to be talking about, which is the summer of scandal that it has just had. It has only five MPs, over half of whom are currently under investigation. Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson, men who are no strangers to controversy and who have shown us time and again that you simply could not redden them, are being investigated for financial wrongdoing, and both have been defiant in their response. We have also had news that another DUP MP is in court, charged with assault. What is most concerning about that was the DUP's response. The DUP leader told us that the party had been aware of the issue for years but saw fit to let the MP in question remain in his role, dismissing it as a private family matter. Such private family matters see women from this place murdered every other week, behind closed doors in family homes by family members and people whom they know. He then told us that it was all right and that there was nothing to worry about, because the DUP had conducted an internal investigation. That brings me to the story that the DUP really does not want us all to focus on: that of its former leader Jeffrey Donaldson and the fact that his sentencing is coming up at the end of the month. That is why we are dragging up Drumcree and talking about a parading issue that has been dead in the water for almost 30 years. I am lucky enough to remember it only as a news item as a child. The DUP wants to distract us from the fact that its internal investigation is ongoing. We are supposed to have trust and confidence in it when it comes to who knew what. We are supposed to believe that only its jilted former members — those with whom it has fallen out — saw what was happening when Jeffrey Donaldson was on all his trips abroad. The DUP needs to stop trying to gaslight the public. It needs to show some humility and stop trying to drag up old arguments and rows that have caused trauma in this place. It needs to start delivering for people.
494 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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