Debate contribution: Civil Disobedience
Debate contribution by Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly on .
- MLA
- Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 5 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Civil Disobedience
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5774247
Read the official Assembly record
Text
This is all about the type of Northern Ireland that we want to build and that we should have by now. It is not the one that is based on the intolerance, hate and bile that I have heard being directed towards British identity or culture over the course of the past week. The vast majority of people across Northern Ireland felt that we had come far. In fact, many organisations and communities take part in activities where all different types of traditions are represented. This week, we did not hear much from the Garvaghy Road residents. For some reason, they did not seem to be able to get their voices heard. Of course, the voices who shouted the loudest were those of the Member's party colleagues, all of whom swanned on to the Garvaghy Road and dominated the headlines. We had the First Minister prancing down the Garvaghy Road with Sinn Féin videographers, photographers and MLAs and with councillors from every part of Ireland. The people whom we did not hear from, however, were the Garvaghy Road residents. Here is the reality. I appeal to Sinn Féin that, instead of running around trying to shore up the hardest possible position against compromise, instead of Sinn Féin and Breandán Mac Cionnaith, who does not even live in the area, running around talking up and creating absolute defiance of the law, that party should get off the stage and allow the residents in the area to be able to talk to local Orangemen and find a resolution through dialogue and compromise, because that is the way forward. That is the future. You are the past.
274 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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