Debate contribution: Sectarian and Racist Intimidation

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 16 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

16 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Sectarian and Racist Intimidation

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5111916

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for extending the time. I thank the Members for tabling this important motion. We have heard a lot about honest conversations and legitimate concerns, but honest conversations about migration do not always happen, especially with some of the politicians who are further to the right than me. Those conversations do not often happen in good faith. Quite often, myths and misinformation are spread, fuelling hate and fear. We need to challenge the role that the Communities Minister played, particularly in relation to Larne leisure centre around the time of the violence during the summer. We also need to challenge his decision to remove intimidation points earlier in the year. That was reckless. The Member for North Belfast had a terrible and risible defence for that. The removal of the intimidation points had a devastating impact on those individuals and marginalised groups that are in the temporary accommodation sector, which is under extreme pressure, and on the wider housing system, particularly in North Belfast, which has been mentioned, but elsewhere as well. If he changed that decision and reintroduced those points — made that one move — it would send a signal to people who are under threat and intimidation that he gets it, he understands it, and he has their back, but it looks as though he is not for budging any time soon, which is shameful. The Minister should have reformed and improved intimidation points and extended them to survivors of domestic abuse. Instead, he levelled the playing field downwards and removed them for everyone. People who have now been intimidated and subjected to sectarian or racist attacks will lose out on the points that they could have received to help them to get a new and permanent home in a place of safety. Instead, they will be forced to stay in a home where they are subjected to violence or intimidation or to uproot their life and move into temporary accommodation or be stuck on the sofa of a friend or relative. It is completely unacceptable. The stats show that, unfortunately, in the past year, there were 2,049 racist incidents in the North and 1,300 race hate crimes. Those are the highest levels since records began. We have a problem with racism in the North; let us not sugar-coat it. We know that thousands more incidents have gone unrecorded, because, quite simply, victims do not trust the PSNI. They feel over-policed and under-protected, especially in minority ethnic communities; they have felt that way for decades. To challenge another myth, I say that Ireland is not full. The country is not full. The number of people who are seeking asylum in the North is 2,535. That is 0·13% of the population. Compare that with other countries across the world: Turkey takes in millions of asylum seekers; Lebanon takes in millions of asylum seekers; and Germany did so a few years ago. Challenge the narrative every step of the way. There are 246 people who are seeking asylum and are living in emergency hotel accommodation, but those whom I have talked to — quite a few over the years — do not want to be in hotels. They are not luxurious, and they are not a wonderful set-up. Quite often, they are like prisons for most of those people. They want a home, and they should be entitled to one. I urge the Minister to get on with it —.

Briefly, because my time is limited.

Yes, and there are other problems that I do not have time to elaborate on, but I thank the Member for that. I also have to say that launching attacks on migrants and asylum seekers — political or violent attacks — is distraction politics at its finest. It is a distraction from the fact that we have inaction, from this Minister and from other Ministers and the Executive, on empty homes. There are at least 21,000 empty homes in the North, if not as many as 50,000, depending on what figures you read from different Departments, but there are zero empty home officers. The Minister could move at speed with that, but he has not. Attacking migrants is a distraction from property hoarding by landlords and investors. It is a distraction from the Executive's refusal to crack down on Airbnbs, and it is a distraction from soaring rents, which we are trying to challenge, but the Minister has not stopped yet. Rent in Belfast has increased by more than 11% in the past year alone, driven up not by migrants or asylum seekers but by landlords. On a final point, a dangerous narrative is developing, and it is from the playbook of the far right, which is that, if a man of colour is in a park, in a shopping centre or on a street corner, he is putting children at risk. That is racist scapegoating, and it needs to be challenged. Unfortunately, children are at risk from abuse and neglect, but it is usually from a family member —

— and usually, statistically, a white person. We need to be careful about that narrative, especially the Member for North Belfast, because his comments were quite dangerously giving approval to some of those dangerous actions.

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

Assessment

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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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