Debate contribution: Programme for Government 2024-27

Debate contribution by Ms Connie Egan on 3 March 2025.

MLA

Ms Connie Egan

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

3 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Programme for Government 2024-27

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4826208

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today is an important milestone for the mandate, with the publication of a finalised Programme for Government, which is something that the Assembly and our public have not seen in 13 years. Cooperation and collaboration across our Executive are the very least that those who voted for us, and those who did not, should be able to expect. That said, this is a milestone, but purely capturing words of ambition on a page cannot be our Assembly's end destination. We need to ensure continued progress and delivery. The document is not perfect by any means, but it is a foundation for progress — a foundation to build upon, build homes, build a workable healthcare system, build our nature recovery, build an increasingly improved education system and build safer communities. The document should certainly not be the ceiling of our ambitions; it certainly is not that for the Alliance Party. The programme is rightly titled 'Doing What Matters Most'. For our communities to succeed, they need to be able to do that by feeling and being safe. That means safe physically and safe to live as themselves without fear. That is the key to ensuring that people can be fulfilled and reach their potential. The commitment across our Executive to "Safer Communities", by including it as a core priority, is incredibly welcome. I will take this opportunity to run through some of that and pull out two extremely pertinent points. First, the responsibility for building safer communities cannot fall to our Justice Minister alone. Our Justice Minister has shown throughout multiple mandates, that, with or without a Programme for Government, she will lead, do her part and deliver. She will deliver on legislation to increase protections for those who are experiencing domestic abuse, deliver on doing all that she can to tackle organised crime and paramilitarism and deliver by doing her best for victims and the extremely hard-working people right across our criminal legal system who prop it up every day. She will do all that while her Department remains historically underfunded. Looking forward, now that we have a Programme for Government, we need to increase and stabilise our policing numbers, deliver on a domestic and sexual abuse strategy, ensure a trauma-informed welfare system, including legal aid availability, and speed up justice so that those who seek it are not left waiting years without closure and the ability to move forward. That includes transformation and exploring solutions outside the courtroom. Those issues cut across Health, Education, the Executive Office, Economy and other agencies. I could go on. As the programme highlights, it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort. That brings me to my second point. Work on prevention and recognition of its importance is vital for us to achieve many, if not all, of the goals that we have set out. Such work is work to relieve pressure on the Justice Department many years from now. Prevention means working to dismantle a cause or issue before it takes form. That is incredibly relevant for so many different areas of work for the Executive, be it embedding preventative healthcare to ensure that people are healthier for longer, an accessible education system to ensure pupils' success and prevent a lacklustre economy, or preventative measures to shape culture and reduce crime and offending so that people across our communities do not just feel safer but are safer. I am extremely proud to be my party's spokesperson on ending violence against women and girls, and I welcome the integral place that that has in the programme. Part of that is about ensuring that we have a justice system that recognises harm beyond physical violence and that looks beyond the outworkings. We so often focus on what happens after someone has been hurt that we forget to look behind us and learn the lessons of how we could have stopped it in the first place. Northern Ireland is still one of the most dangerous places in western Europe to live as a woman, with the victim being female in 20 domestic homicides since 2020. That is despicable, and I wish that I could say that it is unbelievable. If you speak to any community and voluntary organisation that spends time on the ground every day with victims and offenders, it will tell you that actions that are rooted in prevention to shift our culture away from misogyny and into progression and equity are the way forward. Ending violence against women and girls and, more broadly, across our society means everyone working together and staying together. That goes for so much of this. We need to get on with it now and do what is needed, including transforming our public services.

Not only do I have concerns about those comments but the women's sector and our LGBTQ+ sector will have concerns about them, especially as they were from the Minister who is responsible for social inclusion strategies. I thank the Member for his intervention. I think about my constituents in North Down, from whom I hear every day. Like, I am sure, so many of your constituents, they want us to focus on bread-and-butter issues, such as good-quality housing, affordable food, fulfilling jobs and an Executive that will protect them from being in harm's way. The document is a road map and pathway, but it is only the baseline of what we should achieve. I know that the public will hold us to account in that regard. Alliance is all in on doing what is right. We welcome the Programme for Government and look forward to delivering on it — and more — together.

936 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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