Debate contribution: Exclusion of the First Minister from Office under Section 30 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998
Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on .
- MLA
- Mr Gerry Carroll
- Party at the time
- People Before Profit Alliance
- Date
- 12 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Exclusion of the First Minister from Office under Section 30 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5786890
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I begin by paying tribute to the Garvaghy Road residents and the community and the tens of thousands of people from across Ireland who came out to support them. They are not a rabble; they are not a mob: they are good, decent people. For 28 years, residents were told that a march would come back one day and that there would be nothing that they could do about it. The Parades Commission said yes. The courts said yes. The people, however, said no. Thousands stood along that road, day after day, for two weeks, and I was absolutely proud to stand with them. As some should know, residents were at the protest, as were trade unionists, migrants,
people from nationalist and unionist backgrounds. I will keep talking. You will not shout over or disrupt me. They stood together, and they won.
That is what the motions are really about. They are not about law and order or the Pledge of Office. The parties behind them cannot stomach ordinary people's organising, beating them and pushing back their state. The motions are a stunt. Everyone in the room knows it, including the Member who tabled them. He has admitted that they will not remove a single Minister from office, and he is not happy about that. They will not win a majority vote, and, even if they did, they need cross-community consent, which they will not get. Like others in the House, I know how that works, because, last November, I brought a motion of no confidence in the Education Minister, Paul Givan, over his Israeli-funded junket. Forty-seven MLAs voted for the motion — a clear majority of the House — but it fell, because unionist party members closed ranks to protect him. Who called that motion "Punch and Judy politics"? Why it was North Antrim's Mr Timothy Gaston, of course — the Member who has tabled today's Punch and Judy motions.
Maybe later. We will see how we go. I am no defender of the Executive. I have criticised them for years. The motions are not about any of that, however. They are a distraction from the DUP's record in government and, as others said, its litany of scandals involving Members and former Members. I ask those on the DUP Benches directly: who are all the motions for? Are they for the public, the majority of whom want no going back to division, violence or sectarianism, or are they for Carla Lockhart and Jamie Bryson, because "Big Gav" seems to be on his way out? Are these motions the price of holding the DUP together? If so, it is a ridiculous way to manage an internal row in the DUP that is being paid for in Assembly time that should be spent on hospitals and homes. Then we have the lectures. They have the temerity to lecture us about law and order. The DUP leader said that the Chief Constable should leave a meeting with Breandán Mac Cionnaith — that is his name; that is how to pronounce it — as a detainee. That is the same "Roadblock Robinson" who attended an anti-immigration protest in Dundonald last June, the same month in which there was racist rioting across the North. I called him out on that last week, and the police are now investigating the protest. This is the same party whose Communities Minister named a leisure centre where migrant families were sheltering after being burnt out of their homes.
Hours later, a mob set that leisure centre alight. The Standards Commissioner's report said that the Minister's actions:
" heightened tensions and contributed to further unrest".
The DUP leadership shamefully stood by him.
The DUP's Education Minister went to an anti-immigration protest in Lisburn in June. On the same night, migrant families — children among them — were burnt out of their homes. Was it lawful? Probably not. Was it morally correct? Absolutely not. The same party's MP stood beside masked men at Scarva at a counterprotest to a Palestinian solidarity march. Those masked men were hurling abuse, throwing rocks and insulting journalists and there was slurry on the road because, God forbid, a couple of Catholics or Palestinian solidarity protesters were marching nearby. Spare us the sermon. For the DUP, the law is something to enforce on nationalist estates and against migrants, never on itself. Then we have the former Member for North Antrim, Mr Jim Allister, who said that the Chief Constable should have "sanitised" the Garvaghy Road and escorted the Orangemen down it. He said "sanitised", as if the people of that road were dirt or filth on the bottom of your shoe to be scrubbed away. What a disgrace. That is what the unionist elite think of the thousands of decent, ordinary people from the Garvaghy Road who stood to defend themselves. Since then, as has been said, cross hairs have been painted on Paul Duffy's workplace, which I condemn. Their words have consequences. Some in the House talk about the Orange Order as if it is a legitimate vehicle for cultural expression, like a benign Battle of the Boyne re-enactment society. However, here are the facts: it was founded in 1795, a few miles from Portadown, out of sectarian conflict. The gentry soon saw its use to split Protestant tenants from Catholic tenants, and to break the United Irishmen who dared to unite Protestants, Catholics and dissenters. It is worth reminding ourselves — people should know this — that when the Belfast workers stood together in the dock strike of 1907 and the outdoor relief riots of 1932, the Orange card was played to divide them and keep them apart. Political unionism does not speak for working-class Protestants. What has the DUP delivered for the people on the Shankill, Ballybeen or the estates of Portadown?
The Member should listen to the radio, because I condemned the comments that were made about Carla Lockhart last week.
You cannot ask a question and then shout over me when I am trying to speak. A bit of manners, please. I also ask the Member and his party to condemn the comments directed towards the Member for Mid Ulster Ms Sheerin who was called a "banshee" in a disgraceful and misogynistic way. I am clear: I condemn misogyny and hatefulness wherever it comes from. You cannot do that because you are a hypocrite. I will move on. He has exposed himself once again. Over 50,000 families are on the housing waiting list under a DUP Communities Minister, schools are in debt and working-class kids have been told to put on an extra jumper. The 'good jobs' Bill has been held hostage because the DUP cannot stomach the thought of cross-community trade unions getting through the door of the workplace. A working-class person from Portadown who is on the waiting list for an operation has far more in common with the residents of the Garvaghy Road than with anyone who leads the Orange Order or the DUP. Why the tantrum now? It is because the DUP and the UUP know that they are losing. They have lost on the Garvaghy Road, and they are losing on the future of this island. A new Ireland is inevitable; the question is when and what kind. A new Ireland run by the same landlords, developers and vulture funds would be no new Ireland at all. James Connolly warned that a partition would bring:
"a carnival of reaction both North and South".
He was right.
OK.
1,252 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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