Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
Debate contribution by Mr Pádraig Delargy on .
- MLA
- Mr Pádraig Delargy
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 7 December 2022
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4178761
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Every household in the North will be £600 worse off this Christmas because one party refuses to go into government, do its job and end its boycott of the Assembly and Executive. One party refuses to accept the democratic will of the people of the North. It refuses to come back to work with a nationalist First Minister. It refuses to do its job and help the rest of us here to put money back into people's pockets. I refuse to stop standing up for ordinary people. I will continue to do that, as will my party and the other parties here. We will stand up for ordinary people. We will stand up for workers. We will stand up for families across the North. I say to that party that it should form an Executive today. Come back around the table with the rest of us and work together to give people that £600 payment. Let us deliver for people. That is our job. Weeks ago, the former Economy Minister promised people that they would get the payment in November, but now we find out that that had absolutely no basis.
No. We also heard the DUP's five-point plan to invest an extra £1 billion in health, to give 30 hours of free childcare and to keep schools world-class. I would love to know how the DUP intends to do any of that without an Executive. Last Friday, I sat at the Disabled People’s Parliament, and I heard from deaf and disabled people from across the North about how they are struggling day in, day out. I heard about their harrowing experiences and the plethora of practical solutions that we can help to make. What do they want us to do? They want us to get back in here and to get an Executive formed. I also listened to the Children's Commissioner, who stated:
"This is ... 2022 and we’re worried about children dying of hypothermia."
What does she want us to do? She wants us to get back in here and form an Executive. I have listened to people across Derry and across the North, day in, day out, telling us that they are in dire straits, that they are struggling and that they need emergency financial support. Guess what they are telling us: to get back in here and get an Executive formed. You can choose today not to listen to me, and you can choose not to listen to my party or any of the other parties in here, but do not sit there and ignore the people who elected you — the people who will go cold and hungry this winter. The refusal to go into government is an act of gross political and financial negligence, and it needs to end now.
466 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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