Debate contribution: Government: Making It Work
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
- Government: Making It Work
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5774283
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you. It is absolutely important. As I said, the application for the march was put in by the Portadown Orangemen, and they have the right to do so. It was not the DUP that put in that application. The courts supported the Parades Commission and that outcome. It is absolutely right that people should have their basic civil liberties and human rights upheld, and that is what my party has said and repeated time and time again. Here is the difficulty: there is a party that accepts the rule of law only when it goes in its favour. That party accepts the decision of a court only when it agrees with it. That is not equality. That is not the way that we need to do business. As the Member rightly pointed out, we have huge issues to face. This is a time for responsible leadership, not rabble-rousing and blocking roads, and the vast majority of people out there get that. Michelle O'Neill could have put on record her opposition to the decision in a legal and lawful way. Instead, she chose the law of the mob and the law of disorder over the law of the land. That is not right.
203 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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