Debate contribution: Exclusion of the First Minister from Office under Section 30 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998
Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on .
- MLA
- Miss Deirdre Hargey
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- 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 5786981
Read the official Assembly record
Text
There has been a lot of talk about law and order from political unionism and some sections of the media that has focused solely on those who stood with the residents of the Garvaghy Road. I see that much of the commentary is selective and that some have short memories or a case of amnesia when they proclaim that they are the parties of law and order. The DUP, the UUP and the TUV have been loud in recent days in making such claims while completely ignoring their own actions and history. There has been no reference by the DUP to its involvement in the formation and promotion of Ulster Resistance, an illegal loyalist murder gang. There has been no reference to 1976, when Peter Robinson approached fellow DUP members and the secretary of the United Ulster Unionist Council, Clifford Smyth, with the suggestion that the DUP form a paramilitary wing. There has been no reference to Sammy Wilson stating in an article about the Anglo-Irish Agreement that:
"Large sections of the nationalist population would ... be open to ... retaliatory action which years of frustration would bring out."
There has been no reference to when the DUP Whip Jim Allister laid out the carefully planned unionist response. It is well documented that, in August 1986, a meeting took place in a farmhouse in Omagh in County Tyrone. It was attended by five unionist politicians and two members of the Ulster Clubs executive committee. At the meeting, the formation of a new paramilitary organisation was discussed, with a pledge to see the endeavour through, whatever the cost to life or liberty, with a private army that was prepared to fight to the bitter end. The 'Sunday Tribune' reported that, at that meeting, the acquisition of weapons was discussed. We move from August 1986 to 10 November 1986, when Ulster Resistance was formed and launched in the Ulster Hall. That meeting was attended by senior members of the DUP, including the then party leader, Ian Paisley, who said that he would give it his undivided support, and former leader Peter Robinson. They both donned the red berets and were joined by DUP member Ivan Foster and Alan Wright, who was the so-called commander of Ulster Resistance. Sammy Wilson, the then Mayor of Belfast, was also at that rally, and, of course, Nigel Dodds, the then press officer —.
We also had Nigel Dodds, the then DUP press officer, who handed out leaflets that stated the goals of the new illegal paramilitary group. The DUP was not alone in that endeavour. It was joined by members of the UUP: Cecil Walker and Fraser Agnew. Agnew later said that he was not opposed to a citizen's army that came into conflict with the law. The now TUV leader, when he was a DUP member, commented:
"If we have done all that and we are still rejected, then they would have rendered me redundant as a politician, but they would not have rendered me redundant as an individual Loyalist, and then I would act in concert with hundreds of thousands of other individual Loyalists in arming ourselves. No self-respecting individual is going to do anything but resist. In those circumstances there are no lengths to which Ulster men would not go to stop it. None."
Of course, they did not just stop it. Just like the meeting in August 1986 at which acquiring weapons was discussed, the Police Ombudsman's report on the murders in Loughinisland referred to the Ulster Resistance's search for weapons beginning within weeks of its formation in the Ulster Hall in 1986.
It started acquiring weapons after it was launched by senior members of the DUP. It was launched by your leadership and the man who is now leader of the TUV. Of course, we know the lengths that Ulster Resistance went to with the 1987 arms shipment from South Africa in which Noel Little played a key role. We know that it was a joint venture with loyalist paramilitaries, including the UDA and the UVF.
You joined those murder gangs.
Weapons that were also connected —
Will I get a chance to speak?
Settle down.
Thank you very much. Those weapons were connected to the murder of 96 known cases, such as those in Loughinisland, where six Catholics who were watching the World Cup were gunned down at their table, and likely to be connected to hundreds of other murders by loyalists. As we know, the Loughinisland inquiry also connected it to the Glenanne gang, a group of loyalist members and state forces who were connected to the murder of 120 people. You have to ask the question: where did the weapons go?
Do the DUP Members who helped set up the organisation still have them?
The history of political unionism and the DUP working in arms with state forces and loyalist murder gangs lays bare your approach to law and order. It is a case of collective amnesia. There is one rule for you and another rule for everybody else — a double standard that needs to be exposed and, indeed, is being exposed.
Is it?
No, I am not finished, OK? Thank you so much. I will leave it with this. Many in here on the opposite Benches say that it is only about 35 elderly men walking down a road. What they do not look at is the fact that it was a walk that resulted in the murder of 21 individuals from that community.
Any attempt to walk there tramples on those 21 graves. As a family member said to me last week, "Was my cousin's murder not enough?" I will leave you to ponder that question. Were the 21 murders not enough?
957 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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