Debate contribution: UK COVID-19 Inquiry: Institutional Reform

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 9 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Eóin Tennyson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

9 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

UK COVID-19 Inquiry: Institutional Reform

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5295912

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. In closing the debate, first, I pay a heartfelt tribute to those whose lives were irrevocably changed by the pandemic; to the families who lost loved ones, often without a chance to say goodbye, we hold you in our thoughts today; to those whose lives and livelihoods were upended, we acknowledge your resilience in the face of hardship; and to those front-line workers — our doctors, nurses, carers and key staff — who went above and beyond in a time of crisis, we owe you a debt of gratitude that can never truly be repaid. Given that neither the First Minister nor the deputy First Minister has said it — at least, not jointly — I will: I am sorry, and I am embarrassed by the way that the institutions operated during that period. All those people deserved better from the House. It is the experiences, the sacrifices and the voices of those who bore the greatest cost that must be at the heart of the discussions as we reflect on the pandemic, chart a way forward and prepare for the future. COVID-19 was, in every sense, unprecedented. No event in living memory has reshaped our lives so suddenly, profoundly and universally. Mr Buckley said that every Government struggled; I agree with him. No Administration emerged from the crisis without mistakes to acknowledge or lessons to learn, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. However, the findings that relate to the Northern Ireland Executive in particular are stark.

There is a balance to be struck between the economy and health. Various models operated across the world, and we are still analysing their impact. It would be wrong for me to prejudge that at this stage, when the inquiry has not entirely concluded. I can understand why the DUP's attacks on the Alliance Party are so vociferous today. The DUP led the Executive during the pandemic as the largest party, and some of the most stinging criticism is reserved for the two largest parties in the Executive at that time. Do not just take my word for that; the inquiry described decision-making in the Executive as "chaotic" and marred by political disputes, and it found that, at critical junctures, Ministers from the DUP and Sinn Féin:

"failed to put the common interest of all people in Northern Ireland above their party political interests."

It is a damning indictment that, even in the face of a global pandemic, when our people and public services were on their knees, the institutions descended into more chaos and dysfunction.

It is true that the political vacuum created by Sinn Féin's boycott of the Assembly between 2017 and 2020, right before the onset of the pandemic, weakened preparedness, damaged public services and contributed to a chaotic response. It is equally true that, as the pandemic progressed, and when the public were asked to make some of the most difficult sacrifices, the actions of some Sinn Féin Ministers who broke the rules undermined public confidence and deepened the hurt of families who had been denied the very same opportunity to have a funeral and grieve their loved ones. We saw Ministers seeking to sectarianise the virus, with a DUP Minister claiming that one section of our community was spreading COVID more than others. That rhetoric was reckless and corrosive at a time when clarity and unity were so desperately needed. Of course, those were not just failures of leadership, integrity or preparedness, but failures of the current power-sharing structures. Baroness Hallett was clear in her report that the abuse of cross-community votes resulted in dysfunctional decision-making and undermined the ability of the Executive to respond effectively. At the height of the pandemic, sectarian vetoes were being thrown around the Executive like confetti. That led to there being gridlock in one Executive meeting for four days, when swift and decisive action was so desperately needed to protect lives.

No, I will not. COVID did not discriminate between nationalists and unionists. It struck indiscriminately and demanded a united response. The sheer folly of DUP Ministers deploying a cross-community vote against a fellow unionist Health Minister was not only farcical but exposed just how warped the so-called cross-community mechanisms in the Chamber had become.

No, I will not. Whether it is those making the rules in the Executive breaking them outside of the Executive, or those abuses of rules in the Executive to block vital public health measures, the people of Northern Ireland deserve better. Those displays of division and dysfunction are not the preserve of times of global crisis. Since the pandemic, we have experienced yet another walkout of the Executive, this time by the DUP. Then, just this week, we saw the petition of concern deployed on the Floor. In previous mandates, we have seen those mechanisms being used and abused to prevent accountability, frustrate the rights of LGBTQ+ people in our society and frustrate the democratic will of the Assembly. Those shameful abuses are a perversion of democracy, and the displays of arrogance that often accompany them have contributed directly to the collapse of the institutions in previous mandates. Therefore, we all have to learn lessons about where this show inevitably ends. It is long past time that we had a system of government that prioritised the interests of the people whom we represent ahead of the interests of the DUP and Sinn Féin. The current system of up-down, stop-start government and ransom politics needs to end. No single party should have the ability to hold decision-making in the Executive or the Executive itself to ransom. I am weary of successive UK Governments telling Alliance that we have won the academic argument on reform because this is not merely an academic exercise. Failure to act is ruining lives, eroding public confidence and jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement. If the institutions cannot deliver, or, worse, are allowed to collapse once again by those who poke and prod one another across the Chamber in sham fights, I fear that devolution will not return. By pandering to those who upend the institutions or block progress, the Secretary of State is not only rewarding bad behaviour but condemning devolution to death by a thousand collapses. To argue for reform is not to undermine or reject the Good Friday Agreement. It is simply to acknowledge that, with the passage of time and the changes in our society — evidenced not least by the growth of this party — and with the benefit of hindsight, having tested the structures in practice — in some cases, almost to the point of destruction — there is room for change and, indeed, change is a necessity. Our proposals are consistent with the Good Friday Agreement. The principles of power-sharing, inclusion, interdependence and respect are necessary if we are to realise those ambitions and those principles —.

No, I will not give way because I do not have time. Our proposals enshrine the right of parties to be in government based on the strength of their mandates but remove the right of any single party to exclude everybody else from government, as is currently the case. They would not remove cross-community consent, but they would remove parallel consent as a measure of that cross-community support. Ironically, cross-community votes, as they are currently structured in the Assembly, are the least cross-community votes that can happen, because they exclude the voices of genuinely cross-community parties like the Alliance Party. Instead, weighted majority voting would enshrine cross-community protection whilst incentivising cooperation and genuine equality in the way that the Assembly operates, rather than the mutually enforced sectarian vetoes that have not done so and cannot do so. There can be no more time for prevarication. The Secretary of State has said that the issue is in the hands of the local parties, just as the Good Friday Agreement was. That is not true. Without an active and engaged Secretary of State and Irish Government pushing the parties in the right direction, we would never have achieved the Good Friday Agreement. Many of the people out there who were horrified by the COVID inquiry report — they will be equally horrified, I might say, by some of the contributions to this debate — are looking for hope. We have an opportunity to give that to them today by, for the first time as an Assembly, calling on the Secretary of State to convene a reform process that enables us to move beyond what passes for politics in Stormont at the moment and beyond a power carve-up to true power-sharing so that we can finally deliver a form of government that represents everyone and delivers for everyone. I commend the motion to the House.

1,458 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:07 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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