Motion or amendment: Paramilitary Groups Transition from Violence and Crime - Amendment 4

Motion or amendment by Mr Timothy Gaston on 6 March 2025.

MLA: Mr Timothy Gaston
Party at the time: Traditional Unionist Voice
Date: 6 March 2025
Type: Motion or amendment
Business: Motion Amendment · Private Members' Motion · to “Paramilitary Groups Transition from Violence and Crime”
Heading: Paramilitary Groups Transition from Violence and Crime - Amendment 4
Assembly identifier: Document 431457

Read the official Assembly record Open Data source

Text

Paramilitary Groups Transition from Violence and Crime - Amendment 4
Leave out all after ‘agrees that,’ and insert:
‘there was never any place for paramilitarism in our society, and that such groups should either immediately disband or face a robust law enforcement approach like other organised crime gangs; welcomes the work of the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime; notes that it is almost ten years since the Northern Ireland Office published the last assessment on Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland; calls on the Secretary of State to provide an updated assessment; and further calls on the UK and Irish Governments to abandon plans for this scoping and engagement exercise and reinvest the associated funding in law enforcement approaches to paramilitary activity.’

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.14 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.86).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.81).
Subject area: Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism.
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.06	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.08	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.03	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.09	No
Controversy escalation	0.08	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.86	Yes
Overall judgement	0.14	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.81
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.18
Adopts it	0.01

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.97
No identity-related subject	0.03
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00
Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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