Debate contribution: Illegal Immigration: Impact in Northern Ireland

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 20 May 2025.

MLA: Mr Mark Durkan
Party at the time: Social Democratic and Labour Party
Date: 20 May 2025
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Illegal Immigration: Impact in Northern Ireland
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4964429

Text

I was not going to speak, but I feel compelled to do so. Raising concerns about immigration does not make someone racist. I do not dispute that unmanaged immigration compounds existing issues to a degree. However, let us not place the blame at the feet of the immigrants. The proposer of the motion made great play of the lady who could not get a GP appointment and the child who could not get a school place. He is speaking up and standing up for them. I did not hear him speak up or see him stand up for those people yesterday, when he voted for a Budget that is going to enshrine and exacerbate the difficulty that so many of our people have in accessing and relying on crumbling public services. Like other Members —.
That is not Stormont money.
I thank the Member for his intervention. If the NHS was getting the extra £350 million a week that the Brexit bus told us that it would get and that the Member and party across the way championed, we might well be able to afford it. How much did RHI cost the public purse?
This is Westminster money: sure, fill your boots. Like other Members in all parties, I have heard and listened to the concerns of constituents. However, I back up and support what my party colleague said. The DUP is not interested in addressing or allaying those concerns; it is interested only in exploiting them. Mr Gaston referred to recent election results in England. I have no doubt that that is a good part of the motivation behind the motion.
I thank the Member for that helpful contribution, particularly because the reference to the pressure that migration is putting on the health service is — well, not laughable — risible. Have you had the misfortune of being in one of our hospitals lately? Without immigrants, our hospitals would collapse altogether. On the HMO aspect, I tend to agree that there is a requirement to look at policy. I raised that issue on the Floor with the Minister recently. It was interesting to hear the Chair of the Infrastructure Committee speak so passionately on that today. We have had planning officials in front of us in the Committee on several occasions in the past year, and it has not been an issue of concern, as I recall. It is about protecting the character of existing residential areas and the amenity of residents from unsuitable overdevelopment, not from immigrants. I would point out that there is scope for councils, through their local development plans — I do not mean to give your response for you, Minister — to look at limits on HMOs in their areas. I implore the Minister to work with councils on ways in which they can do that to protect residents from overdevelopment. Earlier, in an intervention, I made the point that we have a housing crisis. HMOs are a very small aspect of housing. It is blatantly obvious that the singling out of HMOs was to get a non-DUP Minister here to respond to the debate. Where is the Executive Office on a strategy? Unmanaged immigration does create issues, so where is the Executive Office strategy to manage it? Where are our Executive Office Ministers to address those concerns? It is the Minister for Communities who is responsible for housing. Not only is his Department responsible for housing in general but for the regulation and licensing of HMOs. The DUP might want to rerun the debate and call him to the House. You will not, though, because you know the answer that he would give you, and you do not want to put him in that position. The conflation of those two issues is not just opportunistic or cynical but downright dangerous. Catch yourselves on.

640 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: 0.51 (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 (0.65).
The text criticises or condemns the framing or division (0.70).
Subject area: Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers.
The overall probability was moderate at most and none of the culture-war criteria was close to being met.

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	0.17	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.09	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.19	No
Controversy escalation	0.16	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.65	Yes
Overall judgement	0.51	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.19
Reports or questions it	0.02
Criticises or condemns it (chosen)	0.70
Adopts it	0.09

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers	1.00
No identity-related subject	0.00
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00
Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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