Debate contribution: Paramilitary Groups: Transition from Violence and Crime

Debate contribution by Ms Joanne Bunting on 10 March 2025.

MLA

Ms Joanne Bunting

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

10 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Paramilitary Groups: Transition from Violence and Crime

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4841628

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I declare that I am a member of the political advisory group to the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime (EPPOC). I commend the sterling work that is done through EPPOC's projects, as well as its knowledge, statistical evidence gathering and world-leading approach to trauma-informed practice, all of which, hopefully, will continue not just to bear fruit for affected communities but to keep young people away from everything and everybody that can harm them and their chances and opportunities in life. We in the DUP are clear that there was never any justification for paramilitarism or violence. There was always an alternative. The time when paramilitaries should have gone away is long past. Our view remains that people left their cause behind many moons ago and moved into the territory of criminality and parasitism. A number of those groups feed off their own communities, keep them down, peddle drugs to them and use names of and links to proscribed organisations to settle scores and exercise influence and control. We also know that there are those who want to and are trying to move on. They aim to keep others, including young people, away from those organisations. Without question, those people should be supported in their endeavours. That said, we recognise the need for caution and safeguards to avoid transition rewarding or being seen to reward paramilitaries. The UUP amendment embodies those fears about sentencing, prisoner release and financial incentives. We agree that any future process of engagement must contain inbuilt safeguards against such incentives, as well as against abuse and exploitation. No public body or publicly funded organisation should act in any way that sustains or assists criminal activities, nor should people be afforded status or credibility through any such processes. The notion from the IRC is not new. Previous reports placed great emphasis on the fact that a process of political engagement was needed to bring the Troubles to an end and that discussion with those previously involved in violence and criminality was central to that. It is ironic, however, that those who normalised the erosion of the principles of lawfulness and justice by supporting terrorist prisoner releases now react with incredulity at the prospect of a fresh process of engagement with paramilitary groups. Their hypocrisy and double standards know no bounds, it would seem. We in the DUP did not support the release of prisoners. We do not support two-year sentences as a result of the Belfast Agreement. Indeed, we have been vocal about all of that for years, because we knew the damage that it would cause, the harm that it would do to the innocent victims and communities and the impact that it would have on people's confidence in the justice system, so the pearl-clutching from some in the House is difficult to listen to. We also should not gloss over the fact that the IRC recommendation is over three years old. The Government have not rushed into progressing the proposal. The criminal justice response, however, has not yet been used to maximum effect in the intervening period. Little has been done by the Minister of Justice since the restoration of the institutions to advocate for additional resources for policing, additional police officers and the additional wherewithal to take on paramilitaries. Even then, it came only after the Chief Constable wrote to Downing Street. The PSNI has dangerously low officer numbers — the lowest in history — fewer neighbourhood officers, fewer detectives and fewer specialist search teams. How much —?

No, I will not. How much do she and her party expect the police to do? How often do we hear the Justice Minister use the operational independence of the police to deflect Members' questions in the Chamber? On this occasion, however, the Alliance Party is content to ignore the clear operational assessment by the PSNI that it would be impossible to arrest everyone involved in paramilitarism and criminality and bring an end to that scourge solely through those means. The problem for us all is this: wishing does not make it so. Unpalatable as all of it is to many of us, something needs to change. Action is required, or we will trundle on with the same old, same old. In fact, the danger lies in the rewriting of history; in the glossing over of the utter brutality and senselessness; in the romanticisation of terror campaigns and murder; and in new generations being indoctrinated by myths and falsehoods, being angered by a history that is not based on truth and growing up heroising psychopathic killers. New generations are justifying and glorifying what happened rather than seeing it for the barbarity that it was. At this stage, all these years on and with the criminal justice route narrowing, there is little to be lost from scoping, but it certainly should not be protracted. The law-abiding people of Northern Ireland have had enough.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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