Member's statement: Recent Disturbances

Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on 16 June 2025.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

16 June 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Recent Disturbances

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5010136

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I want to be clear that the violence that I saw last week in my home town of Larne, in Ballymena and across Northern Ireland must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The people of Northern Ireland lived through a generation in which violence was used to police identity and belonging, and we all know where that can lead. It is not an exaggeration to say that lives could have been lost last week. We have learnt the hard way that peace is not built through exclusion and that fear is not a foundation for community. Let me therefore say this clearly: everyone is welcome in our towns, centres and shared spaces, regardless of where they were born. It is the rioting, the hatred and the belief that violence is a tool for asserting control that have no place here. I was in Larne on Wednesday night and watched what happened. I saw the fear on people's faces. I saw the violence up close. I saw a pillar of my community be attacked and destroyed.

I saw police officers being attacked for doing their job and trying to keep the place safe. Larne leisure centre is not just a building; it is a place where kids learn to swim, people go to feel better and older people meet for a chat and a cup of tea. It is a shared space — a place of health and community. Now it carries the stain of violence, racism and organised hate. That is not the Larne that I know.

I am disgusted that the pain of a young girl — a child — has been seized by some people not as a tragedy to grieve or a crisis to fix but as an opportunity to spew their vile, violent racism. It was never about protecting women. In the past five years, at least 19 women in Northern Ireland have been killed by a man whom they knew: their son; partner; brother; husband; ex-partner; grandson; or friend. That is not abstract; that is who killed them. However, instead of confronting that reality, we are still sold the lie that women should fear only the stranger in the alleyway, the foreign man or the outsider. In doing so, we erase the truth. Over 80% of domestic abuse here is committed by a man whom the victim knows. Where is the outrage for that? Let us be blunt: the same people who stormed a leisure centre and burned it while women and children fled, or who burned women and children out of their home, were not marching for better services to deal with domestic abuse, calling for tougher sentencing for sexual assaults or demanding investment in refuge spaces. They were targeting migrant families and attacking our community. I stand here today, as, I know, do many others, to condemn what has happened and any inflammatory rhetoric that incites violence. This is a community, not a battleground. We are not going back.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:50 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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