Debate contribution: Election of the Speaker
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Givan
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 3 February 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Election of the Speaker
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4254991
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I now formally congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on being successfully elected to the position that you hold. I trust that you will give all Members of the House the latitude that you always wished a Speaker would give you when you were a Member and that, when the boundaries are tested, you will be forgiving. I have no doubt that you will do that to all of us in equal measure, not showing any favouritism to this side of the House. It is worth putting on the record my disappointment at the very personal and bitter contribution from Mr Allister. He is an angry man, and I can understand why: he has achieved absolutely nothing — nothing — in order to have the institutions restored. In his contribution, he was again incapable of responding to the challenge by my party leader to provide any evidence of what he has achieved, because it is nothing.
I understand why he is angry and shouting at me. His political career has been marked by failure. Even in the DUP, he was a poor substitute for the late Dr Paisley. He cost us votes when he was our candidate for Europe. When he stood to be a candidate for Westminster, he failed again, to Ian Paisley. By his own test — we measure him against his test — for the election to the Assembly, he said that it would be a failure if he returned on his own, and he is here on his own. His test, which he set, he failed because he is a political failure, a dead-end unionist, when we in the Democratic Unionist Party are on the front foot leading for unionism, and we will build the unionist community, not divide it like the Member for North Antrim.
298 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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