Member's statement: K9 Search and Rescue

Member's statement by Mr Peter Martin on 3 December 2024.

MLA: Mr Peter Martin
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 3 December 2024
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: K9 Search and Rescue
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4690761

Text

This morning, I rise to talk about dogs — super dogs. These dogs use a combination of air scenting and terrain training to locate missing and vulnerable people in any environment. Those amazing canines can cover a search area in half the time it would take a dozen humans. The organisation is called K9 Search and Rescue. It is a professional, voluntary team that uses specialist search dogs to locate missing people across Northern Ireland and abroad. Last week, I had the opportunity to meet one of those four-legged heroes, the longest-serving canine, Max — also the name of our cockapoo — who has been leading the way on life-saving missions for more than seven years. K9 has 13 canines and 22 volunteer dog handlers.
The organisation has also trained some of its live-victim dogs as urban search-and-rescue dogs to help to locate people in collapsed structures, and they have been used in the aftermath of the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake and at the Creeslough explosion. Making the group a success are the incredible team members, who are entirely voluntary and on call 24 hours a day, balancing that commitment with their personal and professional lives. As it stands, the group receives no government funding and relies completely on public donations. The volunteers have met the cost of their own training and equipment, and, to give some context to that, training one dog over a year costs about £8,000.
The most incredible aspect of this story is that K9 Search and Rescue has been declined membership of the Northern Ireland Search and Rescue Practitioners Group by the Justice Minister on the grounds that there is "no service gap". That decision renders statutory agencies such as the PSNI and coastguard powerless to task K9 Search and Rescue directly, even though it may be in a position to assist in a search but, through red tape, cannot. Given that we hear regularly in the Chamber about legitimate shortages in Departments, it is, frankly, astounding that, in the case of an organisation that requires no resources, is fully qualified and is offering its service for free, the Department of Justice is refusing its help. In 2021-22, the PSNI received over 10,000 missing person calls. That is nearly 200 people a week. K9's purpose is to be life-saving, and given that there is no question about its professionalism and competence, it makes no rational sense to me for it to be made redundant by a Department at a time of extreme human need and distress. I call on the Justice Minister to urgently reflect on her decision and change it to the right one.

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

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: 0.03 (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).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.93).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
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	0.03	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.02	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.02	No
Controversy escalation	0.04	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.93	Yes
Overall judgement	0.03	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	1.00
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00
Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy	0.00
Sport (including the GAA), the arts and cultural bodies	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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