Debate contribution: Display of Flags and Emblems Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr David Brooks on 14 September 2026.

MLA: Mr David Brooks
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 14 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Display of Flags and Emblems Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5686215

Text

The Member will remember the example that I gave last week of an area of the greenway in east Belfast. That greenway goes literally right at the back of a loyalist area and has houses either side of it that are part of the loyalist working-class area around the Newtownards Road. That is pretty well known as a loyalist area. Based on the logic that was given to us, that area would have to be almost penalised in expressing its own culture, which would have been normal to it before the greenway was put in, because that greenway is now for the use of all communities the length of the greenway. Essentially, those middle-class communities along the way have their right to not be offended being imposed on an area that has always had a particular identity and has always expressed that identity in that area with no intention of offending anyone else because the area is largely populated by people who are from a loyalist working-class background.

168 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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