Debate contribution: Tackling Paramilitarism

Debate contribution by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 15 October 2024.

MLA

Ms Paula Bradshaw

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

15 October 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Tackling Paramilitarism

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4592552

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the motion. This is an area where my party and the Opposition have much in common. It is crude to put a figure on the harm, destruction and suffering caused by paramilitaries, but the draft Programme for Government does so, and that figure alone should cause us to stop and think. The coercive control of gangs costs a minimum of £750 million, and that cost is borne almost exclusively by the people in the areas over which the paramilitaries exert the coercive control. The cost refers to paramilitary harm, but there is also the cost of lost opportunity. If some of the role models in your community are thugs and the people in positions of influence are gangsters, what hope does a young person have? Indeed, research by the Children's Commissioner demonstrates that some young people are the victims of criminal exploitation that is intimately connected to paramilitarism. That causes harm at home, at school and in the community from the earliest years onwards. It can have a disturbing, emotional and psychological impact on the rest of those children's lives. The motion correctly refers to the sinister and negative presence of extortion, intimidation and violence and, most notably, the undermining of the rule of law. We saw that most starkly in August this year with the racially motivated targeting of attacks on legitimate businesses, which, according to the police, paramilitaries were behind. When I and other elected South Belfast reps engaged with some of those business owners, they told us that they had continued to pay protection money, so they were particularly aggrieved that their businesses were subsequently attacked. We also need to grasp that almost all paramilitary groups have mutated in some way. Very few have gone away, and almost all have turned into something else, although exactly what has occurred varies from place to place. In too many places, we now have a situation where people are community workers by day and thugs by night. Fundamentally, everyone has a right to live free from threat and coercion, be it in their own home or in their community. The threat may be direct, or it may even be subtle through, for example, the display of flags on lamp posts or on public property. That means that there is not only coercion by thugs but no realistic way of reporting to the police domestic violence, drug dealing or assault. Indeed, the reality is that, if someone becomes the victim of threats in their home, they are the one who gets moved, not the perpetrator. I have supported far too many constituents in South Belfast who were intimidated in their homes, had their homes attacked and had to uproot because their safety in their homes could not be guaranteed. It is barbaric and immoral. The basic challenge here, a generation on from the agreement, is to ensure that civil authority applies everywhere equally and that influence over communities and public services is derived exclusively from democratic mandates. We feel that the motion should have included reference to some of the work on tackling paramilitarism that is outlined in the draft Programme for Government and asked that that be strengthened by adding a stand-alone mission on peacebuilding. That would include not just tackling paramilitarism but preventing the hidden harm of the psychological and emotional trauma that arises from paramilitary control; ending the normalisation of exposure to violence from an early age; and removing symbolism that is designed to re-emphasise and leave no doubt about paramilitary presence. It is long past time that we moved on. I support the motion.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:26 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification