Member's statement: Cost-of-living Crisis
Member's statement by Mr David Honeyford on .
- MLA
- Mr David Honeyford
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 6 October 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Cost-of-living Crisis
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5776532
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I will talk about ordinary people who live ordinary lives, because the Chamber underestimates just how far people have moved forward in the past while. The fleadh was a brilliant example that showcased that. People from every background came together, enjoyed themselves and shared this place. That is Northern Ireland today. People are getting on with their lives, working, raising their families, building businesses and enjoying sport, music and our culture. They are looking forward. They struggle to understand why anybody wants to drag us back to the arguments of the past. Why should a tiny minority that is determined to keep division alive get to dictate the future of everybody else who is living an ordinary life? The vast majority of people here have moved on. This is their home. Whether they are British, Irish, both or neither, most people are proud to be from here and to call this place home. What they ask us to do is pretty simple: deal with the things that actually affect their lives. Right now, one of the biggest issues for them is the cost of living. Diesel prices have hit over £2 a litre and are expected to rise. For people who go to work and our farmers, hauliers and small businesses, that increases their costs. Those costs do not disappear, as people will pay them in their weekly shop. Mortgage rates look like they will rise, which will push rents up. We see the soaring prices of heating oil, gas and electricity. People are worried about the cost of getting to work, heating their homes and putting food on the table. They expect the House to focus on those things. They expect us to bring down those energy costs, to work together to help them and to shout from the rooftops to the UK Government so that they help our people and so that the people who live here have more money in their pockets. The people who are outside this Building are miles ahead of the politics that we hear in it. They have moved forward, and this place has not kept up. They want us to focus on their lives, their families and their future, not on the internal party noise, the culture war distraction and the fingers being pointed at one another. They want delivery. They demand delivery. We need to share our home to build our future. That is exactly where the House needs to focus and where we need to be.
416 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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