Topical question AQT 2651/22-27

Topical question by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 5 October 2026.

MLA: Mr Matthew O'Toole
Party at the time: Social Democratic and Labour Party
Date: 5 October 2026
Type: Topical question
Assembly reference: AQT 2651/22-27
Business: Oral Answers to Questions
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5774222

Text

Mr O'Toole asked the First Minister and deputy First Minister, in light of the fact that what the public want now is responsibility, whether the deputy First Minister will promise that she and her party will not make any more serious strategic misjudgements and to state whether she will give a commitment, here and now, not to resign her office before the end of the mandate, given the fact that the past week has been extraordinarily difficult for this place, especially for the decent people of the Garvaghy Road who simply want to live in peace, with, once again, the shadow of division and dysfunction hanging over us, albeit while most people did not think that the DUP could make a worse strategic misjudgement than backing Boris Johnson and outsourcing its judgement to him, it has, by giving Jamie Bryson — a self-published author whose only readers appear to be in the deputy First Minister's party — the wheel.

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

Follow-ups by the same MLA in the Chamber

These were assessed together with this record:

Assessment

Uncertain: weak signal Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations

Uncertain: this record is published but not counted in any total.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.51 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.41).
Subject area: Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations.
The answers did not meet either automatic threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.35	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.09	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.19	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.41	No
Controversy escalation	0.53	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.14	No
Overall judgement	0.51	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.41
Reports or questions it	0.05
Criticises or condemns it	0.24
Adopts it	0.30

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.63
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.30
Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty	0.03
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.02
No identity-related subject	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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