Debate contribution: Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 16 June 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

16 June 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5010226

Read the official Assembly record

Text

My position on the Bill is clear, so my comments will be relatively brief. Underpaid workers across the North, including those in this Building, would bite your hand off for the chance to have their mates set their salaries and expenses. They are not being given such an opportunity, but, with the vote on the Bill today, MLAs are. The legislation allows former MLAs to join the so-called independent panel that sets MLAs' salaries and pensions. Níl an coiste neamhspléach.

It also transfers the power to determine allowances and expenses to MLAs, which puts the Assembly out of kilter with other Parliaments on these islands. There was a claim for £4,000 for a year's worth of heating oil. There were mileage expenses of £19,000 for an MLA who did not drive. There were research expenses of £700,000 — almost three quarters of a million pounds — for a non-existent company. Executive parties have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to oversee their expenses. It is particularly disappointing that the official Opposition cannot muster the courage or common sense to oppose the Bill. Do Opposition Members really believe that the Executive parties deserve a pay increase?

Stormont has presided over a crisis of its own making. Working-class communities, including in my constituency, where there has been the highest increase, are being destroyed by rising rates of poverty. The health service is in terminal decline. We have stagnant wages, a shortage of school places and ecological collapse. Ordinary people will rightly argue that, rather than get a pay hike, MLAs should probably have their pay cut and that they are paid too much as it is. Members can continue to deny that the Bill will entail a massive pay increase. I say this to them: you are taking the public for absolute fools. Mark my words, months down the line — I will be back to remind people of this — it will be reported that the so-called independent remuneration board recommends a pay increase. The increase might not be the £20,000 all at once, but I guarantee that it will be much bigger than the paltry increases that have been offered to those who prop up our health service, teach our children, clean our buildings and serve the public in retail and hospitality. It is worth repeating for the benefit of those in the House and those who are listening that almost 70% of respondents to the Ad Hoc Committee's call for evidence disagreed or strongly disagreed that the board should have regard for the much higher salaries that are paid to politicians in other jurisdictions. Did those submissions matter? Did they hell. Contempt for the public has been shown once again by those in this Building and the parties that run it. The majority of people disagreed that powers to determine allowances should be set by MLAs. Did they listen? You can guess the answer to that. An Act Now petition that opposed any pay rise for MLAs attracted almost 1,400 signatures. Those people, again, were ignored by the Ad Hoc Committee and by the parties in the House and those that dominate the Executive. Public opinion is crystal clear. The Bill is completely tone-deaf and unwanted, and, once again, I will vote against it.

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

Assessment

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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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