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

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 22 September 2026.

MLA: Miss Deirdre Hargey
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
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 5740130

Text

I thank the Member for giving way. I have listened to all the Members who have spoken. When I spoke on the Bill previously, I said that it is not perfect and work needs to be done. That is why my party wants it to go to Committee Stage; so that we can work through it. I get the feeling that your party will block it or use the petition of concern. I have not heard what your alternative is. You have highlighted issues around bonfires and costs. Those situations arose because there were sectarian and racist displays on bonfires, and they were not dealt with. There was no community engagement. In fact, there was a refusal from communities to deal with those issues.
I will also pick up the point that you made, David, about the Newtownards Road and the flying of flags at St Matthew's Church. There are nationalist homes that face out on to the Newtownards Road, but there is a huge peace wall that segregates them from the road because the homes were attacked. Flags are flown there provocatively outside the church and alongside those homes. How do we deal with the issues that residents are raising? You give the impression that it is a unionist road or a loyalist road, and that is it, but you completely neglect to think about the residents and neighbours who live on the Newtownards Road just behind the huge peace wall. There is an absence of community engagement or resolution, so, in that absence, who else needs to step in to deal with the issues? What is your alternative? I have not heard anything. The fact is that the DUP is blocking the establishment of a working group to take forward the FICT recommendations. You will also block this Bill, which means that you do not want to deal with these issues; you want to continue to keep your head in the sand, ignore the issues and pretend that they will go away. The reality is that they will not go away. We all have to sit around the table, and it is in the absence of a working group to look at the FICT recommendations that Paula has introduced the Bill. What is your alternative? What are you proposing? None of the existing legislation is working in the way that it should, and local accommodation is not working because you do not even recognise, in your own words, that there is another community there. That has not worked.
You did not mention it once. You said that it is a loyalist/unionist area, but that is not the case, because there are nationalists who also live on the Newtownards Road. You did not mention that once. What is the alternative? How do you propose to deal with the issue, other than by saying, "Everything is OK here. Nothing needs to be done"? I have not heard that from any of you on that side of the Chamber.

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

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