Debate contribution: Executive Reform

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 4 March 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

4 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Executive Reform

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4254197

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is fitting that the Executive parties and the former Executive parties start by offering public-sector workers an apology for cutting their pay for over two decades. All those who have been in government at some point — that is, Sinn Féin, the DUP, Alliance, the UUP and the SDLP — should be sorry for the destruction of our public services, which have been underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced by successive Administrations. When I was younger, my ma told me that if you are sorry for something, you do not do it again. It means that you have learned a lesson from the past and are ready to do better in the future. Four weeks into the new Assembly, the Administration are set to do the same disastrous deeds all over again and again. If parties were truly sorry for cutting public-sector pay, the first thing that they would do would be to give public-sector workers a real pay rise. Instead, the Assembly ran through a Budget Bill that guarantees those workers only a 5% rise, which is a cut in real terms, considering the rate of inflation. That is not to mention the spate of budget cuts and attacks on public services that will come down the line. Whatever today's outcome, we need to be clear that, if Executive parties do not begin to address those issues, they are not sorry at all for the harm that is being done to our communities and services. Like many previous motions in the Assembly, this one will simply be for the optics. They are ruling by fooling once more.

People Before Profit was one of the strongest and most vocal critics of the DUP's boycott of the Assembly, which was self-serving and wrought untold misery on people across the North. However, today's motion about reform of the Assembly fails to address the real elephant in the room: that these institutions, built and run on the basis of communal designation and division, will always be prone to instability. When the Good Friday Agreement was signed, a critical minority warned that it would effectively institutionalise sectarianism, and that is exactly what has happened. The DUP, when it collapsed the Assembly, was simply exercising its veto on power-sharing as enshrined in Stormont's sectarian institutions. People Before Profit attempted to amend today's motion by calling for the doing away with of communal designations and the removal of the sectarian mechanisms that allow for day-to-day vetoes of Stormont's business. As we see it, the communal veto is not just about collapsing the Assembly but is a sectarian mechanism that has been used to deny democratic rights time and time again. We have seen it used under the guise of the petition of concern to thwart things like same-sex marriage, reproductive rights and Irish-language legislation. It is to the eternal shame of the Assembly that the Tories, under pressure from popular mass movements, were forced to legislate for those demands where Stormont had failed. A system that mandates parties to designate as unionist, nationalist or other assumes that there are and always will be separate communities here and that those communities should elect the leaders to represent their supposedly separate interests. I am not an other. I am a socialist, and I was elected on that ticket. It is a disgrace to the House that me and others are designated offensively as "other". Not only does that approach copper-fasten sectarianism outside these institutions but it is based on an illusion. While the unionist and nationalist establishment parties here seem opposed in principle, they are always united when it comes to cutting workers' pay, impoverishing our communities and stoking communal segregation. Even if the motion passes, it will not begin to cure the sectarian rot at the heart of the Northern state. The cure lies in working-class unity. It is that unity, seen amongst striking public-sector workers, that forced the Assembly back to business. It is that unity that will uplift our communities. It is that unity that will overcome communal division as people — Catholic, Protestant, none, migrant — finally stand up to Stormont together. The contrived unity on offer in the motion will not cut it, because it is an attempt at unity imposed from above. Real unity and real change will either come from outside these institutions or not at all. Working-class communities must start by opposing the pay cut offered to public-sector workers and the punishing revenue-raising measures that the Executive want to impose.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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