Debate contribution: Relationships and Sexuality Education

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 2 November 2026.

MLA

Mr Peter Martin

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

2 November 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Relationships and Sexuality Education

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5807180

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I was not planning to speak on this one, but I think I might. I was on the Education Committee for quite a bit of the inquiry. If RSE was getting a mark in an exam, it might get the mark that I got a lot in school, which is "Must do better". That probably came out in the Committee evidence that I heard. Everything can be improved, but there is a bit of work to be done on RSE, and the Minister will reflect on that when he responds to the debate.

In the first instance, I associate myself with some comments that colleagues have made about safeguarding and the protection of children. I imagine that everyone in the Chamber would associate themselves with such comments. That is mission-critical for our society. It is not something to aspire to but something on which to deliver. During my time on the Education Committee, I agreed with those comments. There is quite a bit in the report, as has been reflected today. My colleague who leads for us on the Education Committee reflected in his speech that there are chunky elements that are fairly innocuous in their content but important to deliver on. There are other bits that I struggle with, however. I asked the Member opposite for an answer to this, and perhaps the Committee Chair will take it on, as it is a genuine question. Under the evidence heading, "Stakeholder Engagement and Inclusivity", it is stated:

"School ethos sometimes limits inclusive RSE".

If we step back a bit and think about it, that is quite a statement. It got me thinking about which school ethos limits RSE. There are five sectors in Northern Ireland and five different ethoses, so is it the controlled sector, the Catholic maintained sector or the integrated sector that is limiting inclusive RSE? If I were a principal of a school, I would be asking whether that statement is targeting my school and in what way it is doing so. To develop some of what the Member who spoke previously was saying, in the same section of the report, recommendation 18 states:

"RSE policies should be inclusive and reflect a diverse range of gender and sexual identities and family types".

I do not want to rehearse the debate, but, in that recommendation, gender identity is not defined, and I am not going back to debating how many gender identities we have. I hope that all Members will at least accept that it is a contested space. Mr Burrows made the point that every Member in the Chamber will have a different view. Some 72% of people in Northern Ireland agreed with the Supreme Court ruling on sex, so 72% probably do not agree with recommendation 18 and may have clear views on why they do not. Similarly, to develop that point a bit, Members will have different views on abortion and the protection of unborn life. That is a contested area, and it is not for me to tell another Member that their view is wrong. This is a debating chamber, and we have the space to make those arguments here, but Members will have their own views, so just to assume that one view is right and another view is wrong is incorrect. Finally, every Committee Chair and perhaps every Committee wants to bring an agreed —.

Yes, I will, because the Member gave way to me.

The Member brings up boys' skirts: I have not mentioned boys' skirts yet in the debate. I have, however, reflected the opinion of the majority of people in Northern Ireland, who have been very clear in their view of the Supreme Court ruling on gender. I have also reflected the fact that the Committee does not agree with that view but that its view runs counter to what the majority of people in Northern Ireland view gender to be. I will not get bogged down in that point, as I have only 40 seconds left. It has been hard for the Committee Chair to get unanimity on the report. He probably would prefer to have produced something that everyone could agree with, but that was not the case. Maybe that is because some of those issues are in the report.

I suppose that that is just aspirational. Certainly, based on what I have seen, I do not support the report. That is a shame, because there are actually really important things in it, as the Member for Lagan Valley indicated. I would have loved to support a report that had just those items in it.

768 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Flagged Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 4 November 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

The contribution engages with a committee report the Assembly is debating, and its question about which school ethos "limits inclusive RSE" is a fair request for clarity. However, its main objection is to recommendation 18, that RSE should "reflect a diverse range of gender and sexual identities and family types", and it argues against this mainly by appeal to majority opinion ("72% probably do not agree", "the majority of people in Northern Ireland"), not by engaging with what the recommendation would do in classrooms. It also gestures dismissively at "how many gender identities we have". Setting the majority against LGBT and trans inclusion in this way is a recognised populist framing on a familiar flashpoint.

Public interest or divisiveness

Parts of the speech deal with substance, including safeguarding, the undefined term "gender identity" and the effect of the report's wording on schools. Its decisive function, though, is to contest the recognition of gender and sexual minorities and diverse families in school education, citing majority disapproval of a group's inclusion rather than practical effects on pupils. The measured tone and the acknowledgement that views differ make it mixed, but the identity objection is what drives the speaker's opposition to the report.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 4 November 2026 at 04:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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