Debate contribution: Paramilitary Groups: Transition from Violence and Crime

Debate contribution by Ms Connie Egan on 10 March 2025.

MLA

Ms Connie Egan

Party at the time

Alliance 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 4841634

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support my party's motion calling for the Assembly's opposition to proposals from the UK and Irish Governments to appoint an independent expert to scope out a new process of engagement to bring about paramilitary group transition and disbandment, which have come about following recommendations in the seventh report of the Independent Reporting Commission. Alliance has put on record its opposition to the recommendation many times over, including Justice Minister Naomi Long, who called the proposal "absolutely flawed". Proscribed organisations still have a chokehold on many people across Northern Ireland. They continue to limit the ambitions of this place 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement. Their methods may look different, but the chill factor that they create across all our communities is undeniable. I say respectfully to colleagues in other parties that we will not support the amendments. While there is much in them with which we agree, such as paramilitaries having no place in our society, we want the message from the House to be that we reject the proposals from the UK and Irish Governments. That is why we will support the amendments. Paramilitary activity is criminal activity. Leaders of paramilitaries are leaders of criminal gangs and perpetrators of organised crime. In any other context, in any other place, it would be unthinkable to negotiate with them in 2025. The proposal to scope out a new process of engagement actively legitimises their presence on the ground in our local communities. It is not just me saying that: that is what people from our local areas and communities who experience paramilitary control have told me. The scourge of criminal activity is holding hostage the potential of our future. I am one of the younger members of the Assembly. I was not even born when the ceasefires were announced, yet here we are, 30 years later, still debating paramilitary activity in our communities and discussing their place in our society. Across Northern Ireland, an average of 45% of young people are still affected by paramilitary-linked harm; in some areas, the figure is as high as 80%. Those are the futures that we put at risk by legitimising proscribed organisations. The coercive control of organised crime gang leaders over young people, whether it is forcing them to deliver drugs or into other dangerous situations, is not to be tolerated. The methodology in the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime provides a path to transform our communities via an evolved public health approach to violence reduction. It is an approach that has been endorsed and co-produced by the people at the interface. It works alongside a robust justice system response and enables the work of the voluntary and community sector, which has worked tirelessly to end the glorification and influence of the groups locally. In my constituency of North Down, we have two areas — Kilcooley and Rathgill — that are part of the Communities in Transition programme. However, paramilitary activity is, unfortunately, not limited to those two areas. I have heard reports from constituents about their reality of living with paramilitary influence in their community. I have heard from parents who are worried about their children's futures; from survivors of domestic abuse who cannot access community support without being threatened by local gangs; and from small businesses that pay out so-called protection money to the groups that inflict the harm on them in the first place. It is the community networks, women's shelters and local agencies that are left to pick up the pieces. The notion of sending an independent facilitator to engage and negotiate with those crime gangs is a slap in the face to the people who, to this day, put themselves at risk to help our constituents find peace in their homes and on our streets. It would be remiss of me, as my party's spokesperson on ending violence against women and girls, not to mention paramilitary-related, gendered coercive control. The recent 'When you know what they are capable of’ research report explores the connection between intimate partner violence and community-based paramilitary social control. Its findings show clearly that women live with double the fear.

Thank you. That is important research, and I look forward to reading it further. Women in those communities are depicted as a tool in the proscribed activity and objectified as belonging to a member of the criminal gangs. They feel owned and exploited and have no control: that is the true reality for women on the ground. Taking steps to negotiate, via the potential independent facilitator, is nothing less than pandering to the perpetrators of that abuse. I urge all parties to support the motion. We do not need an independent facilitator to tell paramilitaries to disband. The law should apply to those groups in the same way as it does to every other criminal organisation.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:07 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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