Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
Debate contribution by Ms Michelle O'Neill on .
- MLA
- Ms Michelle O'Neill
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 17 January 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4177542
Read the official Assembly record
Text
We meet today in a last-ditch attempt to elect a Speaker and form an Executive. We do so as the DUP continues its boycott and refuses to do its job. For two years now, we have been told that the basis of its boycott is its opposition to the Brexit protocol. The British Prime Minister revisited those arrangements, and, after more negotiations with the European Union, the Windsor framework was agreed, yet the DUP turned up its nose at it. That has caused damaging economic uncertainty alongside political instability here. To placate the DUP further, the British Government entered direct two-way negotiations with Jeffrey Donaldson. In taking what we knew was a misguided and flawed approach, to the exclusion of the other parties and the Irish Government, as co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, they have got nowhere. Before Christmas, the British Secretary of State announced that his talks with the DUP had ended, yet Jeffrey Donaldson remains in suspended animation, undecided. All the while, children with special educational needs and their parents suffer. Patients who are on waiting lists and are crippled with pain suffer. That indecision is hampering the £3·3 billion that was put on the table. That money now hangs in the balance. Workers are entitled to, and deserve, their pay rise today. Public-sector workers cannot be punished for DUP failures. The Tories have chronically underfunded the Executive for over a decade, and they now scandalously use that money as ransom to cause financial pain to our public services and public-sector workers. Tomorrow, 170,000 workers, including our nurses, doctors, civil servants, train drivers, bus drivers, teachers and education workers, police support staff, and, essentially, our entire public administration, will take unavoidable general strike action. It represents the single biggest day of industrial action in a generation. Those workers should not have to take to the streets. Due to the DUP's inaction, politics here is stalled indefinitely and our public services are at a standstill. Today is the seventh attempt since the Assembly election to restore the Assembly and Executive. To date, the DUP has refused to respect the democratic outcome of that election.
My message, however, to the DUP today is still to join us and work with us. Let us get around the Executive table and make a real difference to people's lives. I stand for mature, pragmatic politics, whereby, irrespective of social, religious or political background, I see it as my duty to stand up fairly for everyone in our society, across all our communities, and to represent the Northern Ireland Executive as a First Minister for all. Regrettably, the DUP leader's approach is jeopardising vital public services, including health and education, with there being no clear explanation from him for stalling the formation of an Executive. The argument that it continues to relate to the Windsor framework has now lost all credibility. Few people out there know what the DUP is talking about, and fewer care, because it is not in the interest of the common good. The hardship, the suffering and bread-and-butter issues for workers, families, households and businesses are what count and are what the DUP still refuses to prioritise. The only remaining explanation therefore for the DUP boycott is the refusal to accept a nationalist First Minister. There is a dangerous attempt under way to disregard the democratic outcome of the Assembly election, and that threatens democratic governance, public administration, reconciliation and the very fabric of this society. If Jeffrey Donaldson does not change his approach, this sitting may well be the final one of this Assembly. I fear that the democratic institutions of the Good Friday Agreement are in free fall. Although that is reprehensible, those are the hard facts before us all. At midnight tomorrow, the statutory legislation underpinning Executive formation falls if the Executive are not restored by then. A statutory duty is placed on the Secretary of State thereafter to call another Assembly election. Those are the rules. Mr Heaton-Harris signalled to the parties on Monday, however, that he intends to introduce new legislation at Westminster to change the rules and extend the deadline. If it is the case that the DUP will not respect the outcome of the election and restore democracy, there is an obligation on both Governments — the British Government and the Irish Government — to look at plan B. There must be a British-Irish partnership that provides joint stewardship and an intensified role for the Irish Government in the affairs of this state. Members of the public who are looking on here today are not seeing the change that they voted for in that Assembly election. If the DUP position of obstruction remains unchanged, it is imperative that a change of direction within the constitutional framework of the Good Friday Agreement now be advanced. If there are some in the ranks of the DUP who think that, by crashing the institutions, they will crash the Good Friday Agreement itself, I say to them that they are wrong. The Good Friday Agreement will prevail.
841 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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