Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 13 May 2022.

MLA: Mrs Naomi Long
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 13 May 2022
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Speaker's Business
Heading: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4139966

Text

First of all, I thank you, Mr Speaker, for presiding over the operations of the Chamber for the last number of years. Your fairness and inclusivity as Speaker were reflected both in the changes that were made to our procedures in order to ensure that independent Members and smaller groupings had a full opportunity to participate and in the fact that, as you said yourself, you held parliaments for the youth, for pensioners, for disabled persons and for women. It is important that the Chamber reflects the entirety of our society and is inclusive, and you played an important role in that. You also steered us through COVID and hybrid working and, in spite of that, through one of the most challenging legislative timetables that any Speaker has presided over, not least in terms of the number of pieces of legislation and private Members' Bills that came through at the end of the session. I want to pay particular tribute, if I may, to your handling of the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) apology, which was a hugely sensitive matter for all involved and with regard to which you discharged your duties with real dignity. Thanks, also, to your staff, and especially to Frances Leneghan, who has now retired. With respect to the election of the future Speaker, I wish both Mike Nesbitt and Patsy McGlone well. I think that both are able and capable of taking up that role. We are happy to support either and will probably end up supporting both, given the way that things are likely to break down in the Chamber later. In truth, either could do the job, but our priority is that someone does the job. We are here to elect a Speaker so that the Assembly can go about its business, so that those who have been elected can serve the people who elected them and so that those items that we can proceed with in the next few weeks can be moved forward. We come here with a can-do attitude and a commitment to serve the people who elected us, and I hope that others do likewise. The DUP has said in the press that it will not support the election of a Speaker today. There is still time, however, to reflect on that position, notwithstanding what the former First Minister has just said. It is worth remembering, when we talk about consent and equality, that many of us in the Chamber represent people who did not consent to Brexit in the first place, and yet we turned up for work. We turned up for work. We also do not all have equality. Some in the Chamber are more equal than others. My 16 colleagues' and my votes will count for less in this next election than those of everyone else in the Chamber. If we are really committed to equality, we will also be committed to the reform of these institutions so that that anomaly is brought to an end. If you believe in devolution, as Mr Givan claims that he does, you do not gamble with it at such an important juncture; you make it work for the people who elected you. We accept that there are issues with the protocol and that those issues should be resolved, but nothing that the protocol does to harm Northern Ireland will be helped at all by the lack of a functioning Government. In conclusion, to turn up here, sign in, take salaries and refuse to take seats is a slap in the face for every family that is struggling to make ends meet and every person who is sitting on a waiting list. I appeal to the DUP to think long and hard before it insults the electorate by doing that today.

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

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