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

Debate contribution by Mr David Brooks on 22 September 2026.

MLA: Mr David Brooks
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 22 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Display of Flags and Emblems Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5740071

Text

Thank you. Again, we have an example where the Bill sponsor does not want to deal with the more awkward issues. I return to the Newtownards Road and the area around Pitt Park in particular. It is a loyalist working-class area that has been attacked and where people were killed by gunfire from the tower of the Catholic church that sits just across the road from it. I am not here to besmirch that church, but what I am saying is that the geography dictates that you have a Catholic church that faces out on to that area, and nobody would say that the Newtownards Road is not a largely loyalist area. Would the Bill proposer say that that traditional loyalist community on the largely loyalist Newtownards Road was not allowed to express its cultural identity through the flying of Union flags, for instance, because of its proximity to a Catholic church that belongs to a neighbouring community but happens to face out on to the Newtownards Road? Those are some of the quirks that the Bill proposer has to deal with. We have to get into those sorts of difficulties rather than just the generalities, because those are the things that the Department will face if it comes up against the Bill.

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

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