Topical question AQT 1/22-27

Topical question by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 19 February 2024.

MLA: Mr Matthew O'Toole
Party at the time: Social Democratic and Labour Party
Date: 19 February 2024
Type: Topical question
Assembly reference: AQT 1/22-27
Business: Oral Answers to Questions
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4223155

Text

Mr O'Toole asked the First Minister and deputy First Minister whether the First Minister will commit to not resigning her office for the remainder of the mandate, given that, on the day on which she was inaugurated, he asked her to make a commitment to the people of the North that she and the deputy First Minister would not resign and cause the collapse of the institutions, something that he followed up on last Sunday by letter — to which he is yet to receive a response — and bearing in mind that this is not a stunt, given that, today, we have talked about a range of urgent priorities for the people of Northern Ireland for which, in order to deliver, we need to have institutions.

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

Follow-ups by the same MLA in the Chamber

These were assessed together with this record:

19 February 2024 – I agree with the First Minister that we need fundamentally to reform the institutions on the basis of the rules, but,…

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.17 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.94).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.07	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.03	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.07	No
Controversy escalation	0.08	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.52	No
Overall judgement	0.17	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.94
Reports or questions it	0.01
Criticises or condemns it	0.01
Adopts it	0.04

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.68
Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty	0.27
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.03
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.01
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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