Debate contribution: General Teaching Council Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 2 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

2 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

General Teaching Council Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5271763

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Yes, absolutely. Of course, that is what the Committee is there to do. I was not undercutting the Committee's work. I am simply saying that these are questions that need to be asked. There is no harm in putting them in Hansard in the Second Stage debate. I have no shyness about being an effective Opposition and putting these points on, because that is what we are supposed to do. That is literally the reason why the Assembly created an official Opposition, so I am afraid that there will be no apology from me in that regard. To go back to the point about the GTCNI and what changed, I do not have an ideological preference, and nor does the Opposition, for complete replacement if reform is possible. Yes, if reform is robust and comprehensive enough, with a smaller board, an appointments process and updated investigatory and enforcement powers that are adequate, that is OK, but we need to be assured of that. That needs to come out in the Committee process, because it is not just a change of emphasis; it is a change in policy. We have not seen the advice that the Minister has received from his officials. I am not aware of whether the Committee has seen that advice yet. We have the upshot of the recommendations, but we do not have the detail or the basis on which they were made, nor have we seen — I certainly have not seen, but it may have been in the Committee packs — the detailed analysis of how performance has improved at a staff level. I accept that the former special adviser in the Department, Mr Martin, has drawn a distinction between the staff and the board. That is fair enough. We just need to understand why a body that was described as being "beyond repair" is now repairable. Obviously, it is great if you bring your car to a mechanic, and the first time that he investigates, he says, "Scrap it. It is useless", and then you go back to see him a couple of weeks later, and he says "Well, actually, I can fix it if you give me this amount of money". Perhaps that is a slightly facetious analogy, but I use it to simply say that these are things that we need to investigate and check. I do not say this to be hyper-political, but the Minister has clearly undertaken a lot of initiatives in his Department. I do not think that I am being too churlish when I say that it is fair to say that not all those initiatives have been overwhelmingly welcomed by the teaching profession. I encourage them — the teaching unions, and teachers more broadly — to engage with the Bill in a constructive way and not simply in an oppositional way, though we are the Opposition. If they have robust concerns, they need to communicate them to all elected representatives. In relation to the public appointments process, some people will query the replacement of an elected system — perhaps people can see in a superficial way how having people appointed will create a slightly different dynamic from having people who are elected. Sometimes a public appointments process, with all its safeguards, is more appropriate than an elected process, but that is a fundamental change that needs to be understood. It is also true to say — I say this in the most constructive way possible — that there have been a couple of examples where the Minister has used — I will not say "abused" — the public appointments process in ways that have, to put it mildly, raised eyebrows. In the Education Authority, the chair and chief executive did not arrive in their current posts entirely without controversy and through a completely straightforward and unremarkable public appointments process. That will be a question that Committee members will want to interrogate, along with the potential consequences of having a public appointments process rather than an elected process for the GTCNI. If that is an improvement and if there can be safeguards, and if Committee members can be assured that that is the right way to go, that will be useful. We have concerns about the Bill, but we acknowledge that it will proceed today to Committee Stage. We will not divide the House on it. We want to see a robust Committee Stage in which those questions are asked. I will also make the point again, and that is why —.

I will happily give way to Mr Brooks.

No, I am not throwing muck at all. The Member decided to intervene after I had moved on to another point, but since he raised it — I was not going to make a whole big deal out of it — an extraordinary process was used to appoint the chief executive of the Education Authority. There was a clear, very sharp division on the board of the Education Authority about whether that was appropriate. That was a controversial matter and was said to be so at the time. Subsequently, the chair of the Education Authority was appointed, and he was a serving DUP politician. He is a very personable man who is a committed public servant, but he is a serving DUP politician with very strong views, and he was inserted on to the board of the Education Authority as chair. Those were not uncontroversial things, to be clear, Mr Brooks. I am not throwing any muck at those individuals; I am simply saying that those were controversial things that were done by the Minister, OK? I have dealt with that. I do not want to get into a whole slanging match about it, but I will not back away from being honest about that.

I will come back to the point about the Bill, Mr Speaker.

Yes.

Yes, Mr Speaker.

Yes, indeed. I was responding to an intervention.

I am happy to come back to the point. I was responding to an intervention. In conclusion, I say that we need to do our job as legislators really carefully and be mindful not just of the fact that this place is down nearly as much as it is functioning but of the fact that we have passed legislation here and then been scundered about it afterwards. We have been made to look like fools and not up to doing proper legislative scrutiny, so it is important that we are robust and put concerns on the record. I trust that, when the Bill goes to the Committee, it will be robust. I am not saying that it will not be; I am not prejudging the Committee process. I have no qualms about saying that there is a particular onus on the Assembly, given the abysmal levels of public trust in it. Public trust has already been referenced in relation to the teaching profession. We can only aspire to have the levels of trust that the teaching profession has. It is our job to scrutinise the Bill properly. We cannot endorse it at this point, although we will not divide the House on it. I look forward to hearing about the Committee's scrutiny.

1,203 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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