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
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Pledge of Office
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5795584
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I say to that student that everything that we are doing has to build on, secure and ensure the peace that has been built over the past 28 years. We have to continue to look to the future and build on the progress, despite moments like this. When there are huge setbacks in community relations, we have to work even harder to try to build on those community relations. I will work with any willing partner to do so. I think that there is going to be a lot of healing and necessary attention given to the wider Portadown area, because we need to do everything that we can to build community relations again.
I say this to that student: the people of the Garvaghy Road did not want this; I did not want this; and you did not want this. It is for the people in political unionism who decided to bring us back 28 years to one of the most harrowing and traumatic times of the late nineties to explain. I ask this question of them: why? Why do they want to do that? I still do not understand the answer. Why do people want to bring us back? As political leaders in 2026, we have to continue to build on the progress made and to do everything that we can to create that shared future. I want that for everybody, but a shared future will never be built by demonising one community or by asserting one community's rights over another's by domination. We are not going back to those days, and the student should take some comfort from that.
272 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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