Debate contribution: Election of the Speaker

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 3 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

3 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Election of the Speaker

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4254937

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Mr Acting Speaker, I wish both you and the outgoing Speaker well on your retirement. The Speaker is my colleague in West Belfast; I wish you both well. After two years of divisive posturing from the DUP, working-class people are in no mood for the cynical fanfare that surrounds Stormont's resurrection. If I was a member of the DUP sitting here today, I would be utterly embarrassed by the entire debacle. You should be embarrassed that striking public-sector workers have forced you back to work, that you have delivered next to nothing on the protocol and that you have blatantly lied to the base you claim to represent. You put your political interests before workers' pay, public services and the day-to-day struggles that face working-class communities, and you have been found out. Over the past few days, I have been on picket lines with striking education and transport workers, who are out because the return of Stormont does not guarantee the pay rise that they need and deserve. They need to be paid now, and all workers need to be ready to challenge the new Executive to deliver their demands. People Before Profit has been consistent in calling for the DUP to end its boycott, but it would be remiss of me not to outline our firm opposition to the latest Tory/DUP pact. It can be described as a Tory love letter to the DUP. It is couched in the language of the DUP. It is meant as a reward for its divisive antics, and the Tories are signaling that the DUP was justified in holding people to ransom for two years, that the concerns of unionism should be elevated above everything else and that the feelings of hard-line loyalists, including paramilitaries, are there to be pandered to. More importantly, the deal contains absolutely nothing that will tackle the issues facing our communities, including poverty, pay, growing inequalities, hard-up schools or our collapsing NHS. In fact, the deal signifies the exact opposite. In addition, there is talk of water charges and raised rates. The deal also recommits to the devolution of corporation tax, which parties here have been itching to slash for years. Establishment parties that have heralded the changes of a new Executive must think that the public has collective amnesia. They think that their spin, which is lapped up and flung out by the media, will make us forget the failures of previous Administrations. They think that the talk of a new dawn will hide the old divisive and regressive politics at its very core. We remember that the DUP, Sinn Féin and Alliance implemented welfare reform in a previous bid to slash corporation tax, punishing the poor and the vulnerable to give handouts to the rich. Shameful. Workers will remember that those parties cut their pay and gutted public services when Stormont last sat. The people who are languishing on health waiting lists will remember who inflicted those cuts and who opened the door to the slow privatisation of our NHS. Those waiting on a home will remember who refused to build homes and handed land to private, wealthy developers. The communities around Lough Neagh and in the Sperrins and elsewhere will remember who incentivised the destruction of our environment and poisoned our waterways. Therefore, our message is that there should be no honeymoon period for the new Executive, and trade unionists must get ready, as they were this morning, to breathe down the neck of this Administration. While the unionist establishment continues to wrangle over the protocol, unionism remains in terminal decline. The Tories have copper-fastened the Stormont brake, enshrining the communal veto and reinforcing the system of sectarianism that has afflicted the Stormont institutions for years. The instability that that will cause will shake not only the foundations of Stormont but the foundation of the northern state itself. Despite what the Tories have outlined in the deal, the democratic aspiration for a united Ireland will not be stymied by imperial diktat. It is for the people of Ireland to decide. People Before Profit will continue to fight for a socialist path to a united Ireland that sees all people from all backgrounds in its spoils and the politics of sectarianism left in the past. The Tory/DUP love-letter deal is not just about strengthening the Union, it is about strengthening its militaristic aims. It will attempt to incorporate the North further into British military defence systems as the Tories beat the drum of war louder and louder.

Therefore, the new Executive will have a question to answer: will they roll over as the Tories drag us into war in Europe and the Middle East, or will they really stand for peace on the global stage? People have to know that the mass Palestine solidarity movement that has exploded across the world and on this island and will not tolerate the North having any part to play —

— in funding the apartheid state in Israel. More on that later.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Not flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mainly advances the public interest

Against the published rubric

The speech's main thrust is criticism of parties' conduct and record, including the two-year boycott, public-sector pay, welfare reform, corporation tax, the NHS, housing and Lough Neagh, which is criticism of policies and decisions rather than an identity-based attack. It contains some constitutional point-scoring: unionism is described as being 'in terminal decline', a deal as 'imperial diktat', and the Tories as pandering to 'hard-line loyalists, including paramilitaries'. These lines are a small part of a long speech, and they target a government deal and parties rather than portraying unionists as a community as threatening. The Israel remark takes a side on a foreign conflict without mapping it onto communities here.

Public interest or divisiveness

The speech mainly advances substantive political argument about workers' pay, public services, inequality and the record of previous Executives, and it explicitly calls for 'the politics of sectarianism left in the past'. The jibes about unionism's decline and the united Ireland passages add a partisan constitutional edge. However, they are secondary to the economic and accountability case and do not set communities against each other.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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