Debate contribution: Pledge of Office
Debate contribution by Ms Michelle O'Neill on .
- MLA
- Ms Michelle O'Neill
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 19 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Pledge of Office
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5795580
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you for that. Yes, I absolutely agree. As I said, I was proud to stand with the residents of the Garvaghy Road. Again, I pay tribute to the people of the Garvaghy Road for the resilience and steadfastness that they have shown through everything that they have gone through and been put through. It has not been of their making. They did not ask for the situation; they did not ask for this wound to be reopened; they did not ask for this trauma to be revisited upon them. They have rights: they have the right to live free from sectarian hate and intimidation, and they have the right to ensure that the progress that they have seen across their community for the past 28 years is protected. I commend them for that. I agree with the Member about some of the language that has been used. There has been talk of a "rabble", "mobs" and the need for a community to be "sanitised" or sterilised. That is the most horrendous of language, and it is deeply offensive to the people of the Garvaghy Road. I see that such language continued over the weekend and continues, even today, in the public utterances of political unionism. That is dehumanising a community. I will not tolerate that. No one in wider society — no one with a reasonable thought in their head — would think that that is acceptable language. We will not be going backwards, folks. We are only going forward. We are going to continue to build on the progress of the past 28 years. We will not allow any community to be demonised.
275 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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