Debate contribution: Holding Ministers to Account

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 10 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

10 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Holding Ministers to Account

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5225128

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker. I will be as prompt and as quick as I can. In Mr O'Toole's opening remarks, he talked about reform. I will go back to the points that I made in proposing the amendment. There is an obsession with reinventing the wheel, but you cannot and should not have to do that, because the structures already exist. The problem is that you decide not to use them. The Functioning of Government Act 2021 already gives us that power, but the parties opposite refuse to use it. You cannot call for strengthened accountability while ignoring the mechanism that is in place, which is the Commissioner for Standards. The next contributor was Sinéad Ennis, who talked about how the Education Minister has lost the confidence of the community. We hear that Sinn Féin is up for reform. Sinéad seems to speak of that as though coming from the all-knowing oracle, but I am quite sure that Sinn Féin does not speak on behalf of unionism. Therefore, I would not get too carried away about Sinéad's comments about the community losing confidence in Mr Givan. His only alleged crime was going to Israel and visiting a school, but the problem for Sinn Féin, Alliance, the SDLP and Gerry Carroll is that he went to Israel at all. Even if the Minister had not visited a school, we still would have had the pantomime that we have had today. They have been shown to be anti-Israeli.

It is shameful that Gerry has battened down and doubled down on his statement that Paul Givan should not have gone to Israel. I believe that he should have. I got an invite. If I had been able to go, I would have happily gone to Israel. It is only because of unionist Members —.

Yes, absolutely. It is only because unionist Members of the House went out to Israel to bring back some of the stories that —. My goodness, the BBC, as we have seen —.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will go back to the motion. Sinn Féin is once again lecturing us on what it does and holding itself to moral standards. On 28 January, I proposed a motion to the House, which was unanimously agreed. In that motion, there was an onus on the First Minister to come and correct the record about comments that she had made on 7 October 2024, which were directly related to the McMonagle scandal. The First Minister has not done that, so I believe that gives zero credibility for Sinn Féin to come to the Chamber and lecture anybody on reform, after the way it handled the McMonagle paedophile scandal and the fallout from that. Mr Brett was the next Member to speak, and he talked about Mr O'Toole criticising the very structures that his party created. Indeed, he referred to them as being carved into "tablets of stone". Paula Bradshaw was next to speak, and she talked about the greatest threat to these structures and said that the powers are weak. I agree with some of the Alliance Party's points about reform. Indeed, I will pick up on the point that she raised specifically about the fact that Ministers should not glorify terrorism. If that were the case, we would not have too many Ministers on the Sinn Féin Benches, and that is something that I would very much welcome. They would be bound by consequences, but the problem is that, at the minute —

Now, Pat, you would not come in on an intervention. You did not have the guts in the debate earlier to come in and challenge me. You did not have the guts to bring me in —

I am happy to give way. Come on, Mr Sheehan, let's hear you.

I was not here at the time, but taking lectures from a cash-and-carry bomber is something that I will not be doing when I am standing in this Chamber. You have a brass neck on you. You are brazen. The hypocrisy just bleeds out of you, Mr Sheehan.

The next Member to speak was John Stewart. He talked about the minimal substance in the Bill. The one that I want to finish on is that from Carál Ní Chuilín, the Principal Deputy Speaker of this House, who referred to the "genocide junket". That is certainly not what the trip was about. It was a fact-finding mission to expose the hypocrisy of the Sinn Féin/Hamas cosy relationship. My goodness, you do not want the propaganda, but you love to wheel it out, courtesy of the BBC, but —

— you do not like being called out about it. My goodness, Sinn Féin Members should hang their heads in shame. The bed partners that you keep and the terrorist partners that you have.

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

Assessment

Qualifying Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:43 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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