Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Consideration Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Danny Baker on .
- MLA
- Mr Danny Baker
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 21 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Consideration Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5743047
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I start by thanking everyone who helped me to get the Bill to Consideration Stage, particularly Jonathan and Stephen. We have worked back and forth on the amendments with the Committee. It was a very good Committee Stage, and that is what has made for quite a comfortable Consideration Stage, if I am brutally honest, and that is a good thing. In my winding-up speech at the Second Stage, I said that the Bill was no longer my legislation; it was the House's Bill, and it was for Members to bring forward amendments should they want to strengthen it. I suppose, working with the progressive parties — that is how I will describe it — made the amendments possible, because, a bit like at the start of today's debate, the Committee Stage got into the principles of the Bill, and that ship has sailed. I have not hidden behind anything throughout the process; I am putting it at the door of Education. I have said that other Departments should also do more, but there is no hiding, and the Minister should be here to hear that. He knows that. I have told him that, and I have also offered to work with him and his officials. At any stage, I am here to listen and to make it the best piece of legislation possible. At the end of the day, it is for the House to decide. Members may be worried about the funding; and that is why I got into the back and forth on the issue. We could talk all day about what the Ministers spend money on. However, at the end of the day, it is legislation that I brought forward, and, if the House agrees it, the reality is that it will happen. Members have to accept that; they cannot dance on the head of a pin, and that is what I heard in the remarks that were made earlier.
Yes.
325 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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