Debate contribution: Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs

Debate contribution by Mrs Deborah Erskine on 6 October 2026.

MLA

Mrs Deborah Erskine

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

6 October 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5776603

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

The 29 June was a watershed moment. It was a day on which my constituents witnessed the slaughter of 51 cattle outside Fivemiletown. It was a day on which a line in the sand was drawn. Farmers have had enough. The agricultural community has had enough. Rural life has felt under attack. Whilst there has been unprecedented protest — the union that represents farmers passed a motion of no confidence in the Agriculture Minister — the voices of that protest have still not been listened to, and their concerns have not been dealt with.

It gives me no great pleasure to move this motion of no confidence in a Minister, not least because the Minister is one who is supposed to represent our farming community. Why are we here? We have a Minister who is more concerned with penalising farmers than promoting them and with finding fault on the farm than finding answers in his Department. I turn to the Fivemiletown cattle cull, as it has euphemistically been described. Let us be absolutely clear on what the debate is about and what it is not about. It is not a debate about whether a court order should be obeyed: of course it should. It is not a debate about whether animal welfare offences should be taken seriously: of course they should. It is not a debate about whether DAERA staff should be subjected to abuse or intimidation: they should not. It is a debate about judgement, leadership, transparency and ministerial accountability. It is about the response from the Minister when the public began asking serious questions, and that response differed from the one that I originally received. Whilst the news cycle has moved on, my community has not. The issue is still discussed, and it is felt as rawly as on that summer's day in June. It is not me or the DUP saying that we have lost confidence in the Agriculture Minister: DAERA and the Minister have had multiple no-confidence motions brought to their door. The questions raised were not orchestrated by political opponents; they were basic questions from the man and woman on the street, and they arose from the Department's actions. Nobody in the Chamber is disputing the authority of the court or the seriousness of the animal welfare offences that led to the deprivation order. The issue before us today is different. It is about how the order was handled by DAERA; how decisions were made; what alternatives were considered; what happened on the ground in Fivemiletown; what the Minister knew and when he knew it; and, crucially, how he responded when serious concerns were brought to his attention. People witnessed what happened — it happened in their community. They heard the gunshots, they saw what was happening, and they are still deeply distressed by what they witnessed and heard. My constituents contacted me because they wanted answers. They deserved answers. They did not deserve to feel that their concerns were being dismissed or that their account of what they had witnessed was somehow less credible than the account of a Department. That is where the Minister failed. I wrote to the Minister on 30 June, the day after the operation began, seeking answers. The response laid blame at my constituents' door and doubled down on how DAERA handled the operation. I wrote again on 17 July. I did so because I believed that something had gone seriously wrong and that the Department needed to provide clarity. Minister, in the Chamber, I have heard you mock Members for fighting for the sake of their TikTok videos. I did not do that. I gave you the opportunity to listen to the concerns that I brought to you, but you failed. Statements came only after public pressure mounted, questions were answered only when they could no longer be avoided, and the public were left trying to piece together what had happened from media reports and statements and the accounts of those who had been there. That is not transparency; that is not accountability; and that is not good enough from a Department whose Minister repeatedly tells us that animal welfare is at the heart of his responsibilities. In commissioning an independent external review, the Minister himself eventually recognised that questions remained unanswered, but commissioning a review after public outrage is not the same as providing leadership when concerns first emerge. The Minister's initial response mattered. His instinct should have been to listen; his instinct should have been to investigate; and his instinct should have been to reassure constituents and establish the facts.

Instead, too often, the response appeared to defend the Department first and ask questions later: that is a fundamental problem. When concerns were raised about what happened in Fivemiletown, the Minister praised the staff involved, and, later, he accused those seeking answers of creating a "frenzy of abuse". Defending staff from abuse does not mean that Ministers should shield decisions from legitimate scrutiny. We can condemn threats and abuse while still demanding answers. We can respect public servants while questioning the procedures that they followed and whether those were appropriate. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are essential to a healthy democracy, and that is why the motion is not about scapegoating individual officials; it is about political responsibility. The Minister is the person who is accountable to the Assembly for his Department. When something goes badly wrong, a Minister cannot simply say that his officials made the decisions and that he will await a review. Ministerial responsibility means taking ownership; it means recognising when confidence has been lost. For me, the relationship between DAERA and the farming community matters enormously. Our farmers are not an inconvenience that has to be managed. They are the people who feed us. They are the people who care for our countryside. They are the people who live with the consequences of the decisions made in this Building. Across Fermanagh and South Tyrone, I have heard repeatedly from people who feel that the Department has become detached from the realities faced by those who work on the ground. Fivemiletown has become the symbol of the breakdown of trust. The images and accounts from those days shocked people right across Northern Ireland. They shocked farmers and rural communities, and they raised serious questions about the Department's approach to animal welfare and whether it was being applied consistently and appropriately. We cannot have one standard for a farmer who has been scrutinised by DAERA and another standard when DAERA itself is carrying out an operation. If animal welfare is genuinely a priority, it must be the priority in every circumstance. That means not simply asking whether an animal was ultimately killed humanely; it means asking whether the entire process that led to that point was properly planned, proportionate and designed to minimise fear, distress and suffering. The public are entitled to have answers to those questions, and they deserve answers that are based on evidence, not spin, not political point-scoring and not defensive press releases. The Minister is responsible for his own policies. The Minister is responsible for DAERA's procedures, and he is responsible for restoring confidence when those policies and procedures are called into question. Indeed, the Minister has commissioned a review. The findings of the review must be acted on. I am not asking the House to prejudge the findings of the review; I am asking the House to judge something that has already happened. We are judging the Minister's handling of a crisis. We are judging the failure to provide timely and transparent answers. We are judging the failure to recognise the legitimate concerns of the constituents from the outset. We are judging the loss of confidence that has followed. Leadership is about more than wanting somebody else to tell you whether you got it right; leadership is about recognising when the public has lost confidence in you, and the reality is that confidence has been lost. That is why we are standing here today telling the Minister —

— that confidence has been lost.

1,354 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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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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