Debate contribution: Sectarian and Racist Intimidation
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Frew
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 16 September 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Sectarian and Racist Intimidation
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5111772
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank Kellie Armstrong, the Member from Alliance who moved the motion. I listened intently to her speech. I must say that I agreed with the vast majority of it. I thank her for the tone in which she opened the debate, because this is an opportunity for us to unite as an Assembly to condemn violence, specifically the sectarian and racist attacks on individuals and their homes. My constituency has also borne the brunt of some really atrocious attacks in the past number of months. At that time, I felt that, when people talked in generalisms, it did a great disservice to working-class areas and our host communities on the underlying issues that they face. I felt aggrieved about the generalisation of some of the concerns that people were intimating to the media and to me at that time. It is a complicated and multifaceted issue. That is why it has been put in the Programme for Government, one priority of which is "Safer Communities". Because it is in the Programme for Government, there is no doubt that dealing with it is a multi-agency and multi-departmental issue. I will be critical of the motion, because the Alliance Party had a big opportunity with it, given the role that the Justice Department has to play in the community safety framework. The motion refers to the community safety framework. It asks the Minister for Communities:
"to outline what specific action his Department is undertaking to focus resources to deliver housing for all, based on the community safety framework that is designed to protect people who are being targeted in their own homes."
I have no doubt that the Minister for Communities will be able to do so and provide that assurance to the House and to the mover of the motion, but there has been a missed opportunity. The motion could have called on the Executive to work better together through the community safety framework. Typing "community safety framework" in a search takes you to two Departments: the Department for Communities and the Department of Justice. There, you can clearly see that the purpose of the community safety framework is:
"to ensure effective connectivity between the community safety work of the responsible agencies and provide an operational roadmap on how to collectively deliver the safer community objectives set out in the PfG and Community Plans, whilst providing the mechanism to respond proactively and reactively to operational need."
The bodies that make up the membership of the community safety strategic delivery board include the Department of Justice, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Education Authority, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, the Youth Justice Agency, the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the Executive Office, the Department for Communities, the Northern Ireland Office, the Department of Health and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE). I will make the point that I have been echoing since the violence erupted in Northern Ireland in the summer. One real, tangible way of delivering for our people and host communities and for newcomers is to put together a multi-agency task force in each area that includes not only all the Departments in the Executive that have a role to play and all the local government agencies that have a role on the ground but the NIO and the Home Office, which is responsible for immigration. That is our only way of being able to put support and resource on the ground to ensure that the violence that we experienced will never happen again.
593 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
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: 0.12 (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 (0.88).
- The text criticises or condemns the framing or division (0.88).
- Subject area: Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations.
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
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
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.12 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.04 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.05 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.06 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.88 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.12 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing | 0.12 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it (chosen) | 0.88 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.99 |
| Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers | 0.01 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.00 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:16 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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