Debate contribution: Exclusion of the Minister of Education from Office

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 10 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

10 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Exclusion of the Minister of Education from Office

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5224138

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

It is clear that the Minister of Education has lost the confidence of the majority of parties and MLAs in the House. I thank the parties who have supported the motion today — Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance, as well as the independent MLA, Claire Sugden. The Minister has lost the support of tens of thousands of people outside this Building, including the teaching unions and many who work in education. He has brought his Department into disrepute, failed to uphold the Pledge of Office and failed to comply with the ministerial code of conduct. I wish to set out with the utmost clarity the case for Paul Givan to resign as Minister of Education. Paul Givan stated that he travelled to Israel in his capacity as an individual MLA. That was found to be untrue. He later admitted that it was his idea and decision to make the trip relevant to his role as Education Minister. Minister Givan claimed that the trip came at no cost to the public purse. That was also untrue. The visit to the school was publicised using departmental resources. In the House last week, the Minister stated that he had meetings with his officials in the Department to discuss the trip. That also has a cost attached to it. The Functioning of Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2021 states that a Minister who holds an official meeting must ensure that a civil servant is present. That did not happen, even though Paul Givan said explicitly that the school visit was directly relevant to his ministerial portfolio. Despite the Minister's bluster and mudslinging, there is no doubt that those meetings were official meetings. Paul Givan said that the parts of his visit pertaining to his role as Minister were totally non-political. That, again, is not true. He visited the Israeli Parliament, where he was listed not as an individual MLA but as the Minister of Education. He shared an overtly political social media post about the event, insinuating that Israeli parliamentarians think that the North should remain a part of the UK. Paul Givan claims that his trip to Israel was an objective, fact-finding mission. Indeed, the principle of integrity in the ministerial code of conduct states that those in public office should not have financial or other obligations to outside organisations that could influence their official duties. That rule was clearly flouted. The visit was a propaganda junket funded by the Israeli state. There can be no other way to describe it, hence the huge outcry from a huge number of the public. In this Chamber, a matter of days before the trip, Paul Givan expressed his thanks to the Israeli Defence Forces, as he calls them. I wonder whether that was before he had his ticket booked to Jerusalem. In response to incredibly serious questions about his decision-making in office, Minister Givan has refused to acknowledge or apologise for breaking the rules of his office. Instead, he has sought to deflect, obfuscate and sling offensive, inaccurate slurs. Had he not been so offensive and arrogant, this matter might have blown over. The Minister has levelled a charge of antisemitism against me in particular and other Members of this Chamber who asked questions about his recent trip to Israel. I wish to refute that in the strongest possible terms and to condemn the Minister for diminishing the truly horrific and deeply serious reality of antisemitism by flinging it at his critics like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I would also like to remind him of the great replacement-type conspiracy theories that have been repeated by his party colleagues almost every single week, which have their roots in antisemitic hatred. It is his party that peddles far right rhetoric in an attempt to deflect and blame minorities and migrants for society's ills. The Minister should be ashamed and apologetic, but then he is not known for his honesty or his humility. As I have just set out, the case for the Minister to resign is strong before we even consider that he made an official visit to a state that is carrying out an active genocide against the people of Palestine, while Ministers here have a duty to prevent genocide at all costs. For the record, I believe that the Minister's travelling to Israel during this genocide is reason enough to question his fitness for ministerial office. Israel has openly defied international law time and again, inflicting maximum suffering on civilians. That is not just my view or the view of other parties in the House but the words of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The International Court of Justice has recognised the unlawfulness of Israel's ongoing presence in the occupied Palestinian territories. Paul Givan chose to visit a school in those occupied territories. Bizarrely, he patted himself on the back for visiting a school in illegally occupied territory because it was integrated. The irony of that statement should not be lost, given his party's role in preventing integration at home on every step of the way. The Minister repeated lies about the education that Palestinians receive. He claimed, last week, that they are told to hate the Jews. That is completely false and inaccurate, is deeply racist towards Arabs and ignores the hatred that is taught in the Israeli education system —.

In a second, maybe. In that state, "Death to the Arabs" is regularly chanted in the streets by settlers, with absolutely no repercussions. Days before the Minister smiled for pictures in the Knesset, that same body voted to annex the West Bank — a decision that would further breach international law and that was criticised heavily by US Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, those well-known members of that left-wing cabal. Millions of us have been forced to watch the death, torture, bloodshed and suffering of Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli state. I cannot fathom how anyone could see children with missing limbs and lifeless bodies being pulled out of rubble and then accept an invitation from the people who are directly responsible for that mass slaughter. The Minister and his party made a fundamental mistake in writing off the anger of the Palestine Solidarity Movement and people across communities in the North as antisemitic, sectarian or terrorist sympathising. That is not just a cynical deflection tactic; the DUP accuses its critics of being antisemitic or sectarian because it so desperately wants that to be the truth.

Maybe in a second. The DUP fears the power of the local and global Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is cross-community, diverse and filled with millions of people of all ages, religions and backgrounds. In response to the motion, some people talked about the need to focus on issues at home, but I say, "Look at home. Look at the state of our schools". A total of 84 schools across the North are suffering from black mould, and six of those are in the Minister's constituency. That is the context in which he chose to travel to Israel for six days to visit one school and to smile alongside the Israeli Government. The Education Authority (EA) told principals recently:

"to take any and all actions possible to reduce expenditure"

to fill a £300 million black hole in the budget. That is austerity on steroids. The Minister ordered the removal from the EA website of guidance and support for trans pupils, trying to further kick, marginalise and attack a community that is already under huge repression and attacks. His Department published plans to criminalise teachers for not taking part in school inspections while taking legal industrial action. Just last week, the EA announced that it was hiking the price of school meals and cutting overtime payments and school music programmes. A few days ago, I was contacted by an education other than at school (EOTAS) teacher who works with marginalised and vulnerable young people. Disgracefully, the EA had told them that referrals to that provision were being suspended. As you can imagine, the staff are demoralised and furious about the lack of communication and transparency. I could go on and on, but it is a long list that I do not have the time to go through. Paul Givan's tenure as Education Minister was marred with controversy and failings long before this scandal. He has failed education workers, schools and some of the most vulnerable and marginalised in our communities. He has ducked and weaved in and out of the truth in order to justify a trip to Israel as it actively continues to commit genocide against Palestinians. While in Israel, he failed to uphold his Pledge of Office and to comply with the ministerial code of conduct. He has made deeply offensive and unfounded accusations of antisemitism, because he is in a tailspin. I am sure that many of the same slanderous remarks will be recycled in the debate, as the DUP is not renowned for its creativity. Those accusations should be utterly rejected and condemned by all. It is an embarrassment to the institutions that big parties here claim that they want to protect at all costs Minister Givan continuing in his role as Minister of Education. I appeal to the Minister to do the right thing, make his apologies, accept that he is not fit to hold the post of Minister of Education, and step aside.

1,572 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Not flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

The core of the speech is an accountability case under the ministerial code. It covers whether the trip was official, its cost to the public purse, the absence of a civil servant at official meetings as the 2021 Act requires, and obligations to an outside funder. It closes with service failures such as black mould in schools, the budget gap and EOTAS referrals. The strong statements on Israel and Gaza take a side on a foreign conflict without mapping it onto communities here. However, the speech also makes identity-based attacks on a party as a whole, saying it "peddles far right rhetoric" to "blame minorities and migrants" and that its colleagues repeat "great replacement-type conspiracy theories", which the rubric treats as communal antagonism.

Public interest or divisiveness

The speech mainly serves accountability: it sets out specific alleged breaches of the Pledge of Office and ministerial code, and part of it rebuts accusations of antisemitism made against the speaker and others. The broader charges of bigotry against the minister's party, and the claim that it calls critics antisemitic "because it so desperately wants that to be the truth", go beyond the minister's conduct into partisan identity point-scoring. These passages are substantial but secondary to the scrutiny case.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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