Jim Allister
North Antrim · Traditional Unionist Voice · Northern Ireland
“<BR /> <BR />Last week, a 'News Letter' editorial rightly drew attention to the fact that there is a chorus of demand that it is up to the British Government to pay for that, but no pressure whatsoever on the GAA — the primary beneficiary — which still persists that its contribution will be a miserly £15 million.”
“Public money, we are constantly told, is in short supply and scarce. I am sure that it is, and will continue to be so. Yet, while many in the House pay lip service to the need to prioritise health, there seems to be a majority here who would prioritise public spending on a sporting facility, namely Casement Park.”
“That editorial stated that the DUP "should make clear" its view on the Casement Park costs. Yet, yesterday, we had the launch of the DUP manifesto and not a mention of Casement Park. We have a Minister — Minister Lyons — who has ruled out clawback for non-GAA use of that stadium.”
“Therefore, the Minister comes to the House with a proposal that, effectively, has been written in Brussels, because it tells us how much we can give to our fishing industry in Northern Ireland.”
“The Minister told us that this is a scheme under the Fisheries Act, which it is, whereby all the devolved regions and England and Wales can make their own provision.”
“Rather than removing the green lane, the introduction of the new customs border arrangements will further advance the development of the green lane, thereby helping to make the Irish Sea border and our alienation from the rest of the UK more firmly established.”
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“I join others in sincerely wishing Mrs Foster and her family — the family are very often those least spoken of, and yet they share most of the burden — every good wish going forward as she retires from the office of First Minister.”
“You have not heard anything like that from me. You have not heard any prohibition arguments from me. You have not heard any call for a ban on licensing hours from me. What you have heard is that what we have is enough. I have not tabled an amendment to oppose the extra drinking-up time. If you can be in licensed premises with drink served until 1.00 am and you have an hour of drinking up, that takes you to 2.00 am. Maybe I am an old fuddy-duddy, but that is quite long enough. The House needs to get a grip on where it is taking this society in terms of the public health implications. Maybe it is because it is fashionable and it appeals and it makes you all look so liberal and everything else that you think, "Well, let's just do it". Do not just do it; let us look at the health consequences and realise that enough is enough.”
“<BR /> <BR />In clauses 2 and 4, the House, which knows about the dire state of our health service, is saying, "Although we have been warned by the Public Health Agency what one extended hour means in terms of cost to our health service and in terms of all those things, and although we have had professional advice from experts, such as the professor who told us what the international studies show, we know better, and we're going to extend the opening hours until, effectively, three in the morning". That is not a constructive or responsible way to go. That is why I oppose clauses 2 —.”
“I listened to the Member's very interesting speech; she made some compelling arguments. I follow the logic of what she is saying, but, of course, the difficulty that might be ensnared in the logic of her argument is that that depends on wholly compliant premises. If a premises is still open — maybe the door is locked and the music is still playing — what assurance would we have that the rules will not be bent to a point where it extends to more drinking rather than less? That is the real ensnarement in her attractively packaged proposal, and that is where I have difficulties with it.”
“She is right, of course, because the Bill does both. It extends the drinking time by an hour and extends the drinking-up time by half an hour to an hour. That will be the longest period anywhere in the United Kingdom. You are really talking about a 90-minute extension and people spilling on to our streets on a Friday or Saturday at 3.00 am.”
“The academic studies that do not fit have just been ignored in the House. The professional advice has just been ignored. Is the House so beholden to the licensed trade and the hospitality industry that we are just going to ignore all that while mouthing platitudes about helping our health service? I really think that we have an opportunity to do that, and it is by rejecting clauses 2 and 4 of the Bill. <BR /> <BR />Dr O'Donnell went on:”
“There we have it, Members. It is very clear, coming from an expert who has studied the matter and says that every study there has ever been reaches the same conclusion, which is this: increase the hours and you increase the assaults and all that flows with it. <BR /> <BR />Dr O'Donnell appeared before the Committee on that same day. She said:”
“In the Second Stage debate, I referred to Norway. At Committee, Professor Fitzgerald said:”
“It is pretty elementary in that regard. <BR /> <BR />If the Public Health Agency was not a suitable or adequate advocate for the Committee, what about Professor Niamh Fitzgerald from the University of Stirling? This is what she told the Committee on 25 February:”
“Of course, the argument that, if you do not have extended hours, you will have more harmful home drinking is quite a fatuous argument because, if there is logic in it, the ultimate logic of that is that you have no limitations on public house and hotel alcohol consumption. If the answer to people drinking too much at home is to have longer opening hours in our licensed premises, the logic of that argument, which is why I say that it is fatuous, is that you would have no licensing limits whatever. You would have opening 24 hours a day, and then people would not have the need to drink at home. That is the logic of that foolish argument, with respect. <BR /> <BR />The Public Health Agency was very clear to the Committee and to Mr Durkan about the harm that is being done. Mr Meehan, in answering Kellie Armstrong, was clear:”
“When Mr Durkan asked him a question, suggesting that you could not put all that down to increased hours, Mr Owen had a very crisp and straightforward answer:”
“Mr Meehan went on to tell the Committee how significant a gateway drug alcohol was to other drugs. He said:”
“I hear what you say, Deputy Speaker, but I believed that I was debating, in the group 1 amendments, the question of the extension of alcohol availability. I am quoting, not in some abstract, distant and remote way, but directly from the Public Health Agency on what it had to say on the extra availability of alcohol that clause 2, which is in this group, and clause 4 will produce.”
“There it is. The Public Health Agency could not be plainer to the House: do what you want to do in the Bill and you will increase the cost of alcohol-related harm in our community. That at a time when we all profess great concern about fixing our health service. What are we going to do? Pile on more pressure. Mr Meehan went on:”
“Some of that is done, in the words of the Chair of the Committee, because the hospitality industry has had a hard time. Yes, it has, but are we just going to pile more pressure on our health service as a consequence? Is that the answer? <BR /> <BR />It is not that the Committee was left in ignorance of what would flow from these issues. It heard some very stark evidence from the Public Health Agency. On 28 January, Mr Meehan could not have been clearer with the Committee. I want to read into the record what he told the Committee that has come before the House to advocate more availability of alcohol. This is not me; this is not some zealot; this is the Public Health Agency. Mr Meehan told the Committee:”
“<BR /> <BR />In the Second Stage debate on the Bill, I referred the House to the Audit Office's report on addiction services, and I asked whether Members had read it. When you get to the stage of a Bill returning with no decrease in or no regard to the public health issues, you have to wonder. What were those key facts in that Audit Office report from last year? The estimated cost of alcohol abuse per annum in Northern Ireland is £900 million — almost £1 billion. Every day, on average, 200 hospital beds are occupied by those who are suffering substance abuse, many of them from alcohol. In 2018, 284 of our citizens died from alcohol misuse, yet the proposition before the House tonight is that we should simply increase the availability in the certain knowledge that that will increase the misuse.”
“I wish to examine the issue of extended hours for licensed premises through the prism of public health. It is abundantly clear, as our Health Minister is on record as saying, that the harms caused by the misuse of alcohol are a major public health issue in Northern Ireland. Of course, the harms that are caused by the misuse of alcohol are facilitated by two issues: one, by the affordability of alcohol and, secondly, the availability of alcohol. The Bill, effectively, does nothing yet about the affordability of alcohol. On the issue of availability, of course, it is headed in the direction of increasing it, therefore, I believe, increasing the public health damage that flows from the misuse of alcohol.”
“That is not necessary; I just wanted it to be recorded.”
“The Civil Service has been without a permanent head for almost a year, and now we have a proposition of a twin-headed approach. Does the Minister think that the absence of a head of the Civil Service has diminished the strategic direction of and leadership in the Civil Service, and will the twin-headed approach worsen or improve that?”
“Thank you very much. I want to focus on the joint agency task force. The statement is striking by the fact that it makes no mention of paramilitary organisations. They were not mentioned until the Minister's answer to the previous question. Does the Minister wish us to believe that there are no paramilitary links or traces in cross-border crime? Is that too uncomfortable for the process? Will she give us an assessment of the continuing role of paramilitarism within organised crime on a cross-border basis?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I indicated at the start that I wanted to participate.”
“The House has a different priority: a shamefully political priority of promoting the Irish language over the health of its citizens. Shame on the House.”
“What am I to say to that gentleman? "Oh well, there are more important things that we need to spend money on: translation services for Irish and Ulster Scots. Get your priorities right, man. Do not worry about your wife lying in agony on the floor. We do not need to fix the health service until we have provided translation services". Really? Then the House wonders why it struggles with credibility in the community. <BR /> <BR />We were awash with money for COVID. What did we do with most of it, or, at least, with some of it? We decided that Royal County Down golf club needed £1·5 million. Golf clubs needed £4·5 million. The IFA needed £6·5 million. The GAA needed £7·5 million. The health service did not need that money; of course not. Now, the health service does not need the money that might employ 10 or a dozen nurses.”
“Yet, in the depths of a health crisis and a money crisis affecting health, we have a proposition that we should squander an amount such as that on fitting out this place with 10 interpreters so that people in pursuit of that vanity project can, when they wish, speak in Irish or, if any Members spoke it, Ulster Scots and have the vanity of knowing that it is being translated into English, and vice versa. What a total waste of much-needed money. Yet that is the sort of project that some in the House prioritise above fixing and improving the health of our citizens. <BR /> <BR />What comfort is that to the man to whom I spoke at the weekend? He waited six and a half hours for an ambulance to arrive at his home to take his wife, who had fallen, broken her femur and smashed her hip, to hospital. The ambulance did not arrive until 3.00 am.”
“On the very day that we hold this debate, we all get a missive from the Chair of the Procedures Committee telling us that we now have a proposal from that Committee to spend £321,000 on translation services in the Chamber. A sum of £321,000 would employ 10 new nurses per annum, yet the priority of the Procedures Committee, or of the majority who are represented on that Committee, is to take that money and spend it on needless translation services. There is not a Member who does not speak or understand English.”
“Traditionally, and without fail, we hear much lip service in the House to the need to address the huge needs of the Health budget. I do not gainsay or dissent from that whatsoever. Under devolution, our health has suffered greatly, not least because of the reduction of nigh on 2,000 beds and all the accompanying staff who have been removed from our system. No wonder, then, that we have waiting lists that are crippling the service. <BR /> <BR />When I hear all that lip service to spending on health, it causes me to look at the Budget and to ask this: have we gone for efficiencies? Are we in the business of ending squander?”
“Will the Minister write to me setting out the total spend in capital and resource on Irish-medium education since that sector came into existence?”
“The Minister was elected to this House on a manifesto that contained this pledge:”
“It is to the shame of this House that all those events have been brushed under the carpet. There is no centenary stone and not even a rose allowed to blossom or a flag on this Building today to mark the 100th anniversary of when the legislature of Northern Ireland first met. That is a calculated slight and one that I repudiate.”
“Of course, if he had consulted the Executive, he would have been bogged down in months of disagreement, so I am glad that he got on with the job and did it. I wish Mr Ringland well in that regard. <BR /> <BR />Moreover, it is important that the appointment is made in this, our centenary year. Indeed, today — although, shamefully, we are not marking the day in any way in the Assembly — is the 100th anniversary of the very first time that the predecessor legislature of this place met in Northern Ireland. I salute the men of that generation who settled down, made provision and bedded in Northern Ireland in very turbulent years. Many have much to be thankful for in that regard. They were neither flip-floppers nor rollovers, but they did a good job, and I place that on the record.”
“I welcome the timely appointment of an envoy. I note the manner in which Sinn Féin raised the issue; it is in the old vernacular of a "not a unionist about the place" approach. Sinn Féin does not want to see any challenge to its monopoly of misrepresentation in the United States. The appointment is a good move. I am sure that Mr Ringland will not always please me in what he says, but it is important that Northern Ireland is so represented. <BR /> <BR />The thing that I find quite staggering in this debate is the total lack of recognition that international relations are not a devolved matter. They are a matter exclusively for the Secretary of State. There is all this whinging about not consulting the Executive, but he had absolutely no need to consult them. It is not a devolved issue; it is a matter totally within his competence.”
“Probably the most notable thing about the strategy is that it has been on the books for so long — since 2009 — with little progress. Is the Minister conscious of or does she have any plans for not only Ballycastle town but the many rural villages in that part of north Antrim that have suffered immense neglect in terms of community development?”
“I have a simple question: will Sinn Féin nominate a deputy First Minister if the DUP does not meet your terms? Is the reality of this absurd system that a party that has a vested interest in instability, even in a pandemic, can exploit the situation to its advantage?”
“After all the concessions that the Minister demands of others, why is she and her party still blocking the economic development of the Maze and making it subject to the glorification of terrorism?”
“<BR /> <BR />Finally, if this should prove to be the last statement by the Minister, as Minister of Education, in the House, I wish him well.”
“I want to return to the theme of the questions asked by Mrs Barton and Ms Bradshaw. It seems pretty clear that a fundamental issue is the disconnect between parents and the education of their children. There is a lack of encouragement at many times in that regard. The Minister referred to the existing extended-schools programme and then told us that we will move to something that is short-handedly called "the RED programme". What is new about the RED programme that will address that fundamental issue? <BR /> <BR />Like others, I express the concern that there is no settled funding programme. Are we in danger of start-stop funding that depends on monitoring rounds and all the instability that comes with those? Is that really the way to go?”
“I said £1·6 million because that is exactly the figure that the Minister said in his first speech today.”
“— almost £19 million to implement it? That is another part of the farce of this House.”
“For the political optics, however, we must, at a time of COVID, spend £1·6 million on such nonsense. What a sordid commentary on the Executive. <BR /> <BR />Then we find in the document that Mr Poots's Department wants to spend another £18·8 million on implementing the protocol. Mr Poots tells us that he is opposed to the protocol, and yet, in the Budget document, he is looking for EU exit staff costs of £18·8 million. How could Brussels ever take seriously anyone who says that they want to dismantle the protocol when, at the same time, they ask for —”
“The Department of Agriculture , in three years, had no requests. The Department of Finance, in three years, had five requests for Irish and one for Ulster Scots; that will be a quare challenge. The Department of Justice had no requests. In three years, there were 13 requests to translate government documents into Irish and one such request for a translation into Ulster Scots. Yet, according to the document, that Department wants to spend, the Minister tells us, £1·6 million on a translation hub. We hear today of the billion pounds and more that our health service will need to tackle waiting lists, but the Government prioritise a translation hub that no one needs and that is not required, because everyone who reads government documents can also read English, in which they are published.”
“<BR /> <BR />Yet, this Budget can find room for squander. The Minister told us about £1·6 million for a translation hub to translate into Irish and Ulster Scots. I asked some questions for written answer of every Minister in the House. If we are going to have a translation hub, where is the demand for translation? I asked every Department how many requests they had in 2017-18, 2019-2020 and 2020-21 for translation of departmental documents into Irish or Ulster Scots. Of the five Departments that have answered so far, here are the results. They rival the UK's performance in Eurovision and probably have the same political connotations. The Health Department had no requests. The Department for Infrastructure, in three years, had eight requests for Irish and none for Ulster Scots.”
“It is no surprise, maybe, from Mr Murphy, because what sort of a country produces a Budget in a centenary year without mentioning it or that does not want money for it? Maybe, the sort of country that has, as its Finance Minister, someone who thought it appropriate to join a terrorist organisation to seek to bomb that very country out of existence. Now, he is in the smug position to deliver a Budget that delivers such an insult to this place called Northern Ireland of which he is the Minister of Finance. Of course, he did much more than that. He rubbed the nose of every unionist in the dirt when he refused to allow a centenary stone within the grounds of Parliament Buildings, as did the Assembly Commission when, subject to the same belligerent Sinn Féin veto, it refused a centenary stone within the curtilage of this very Building.”
“What other country in the world, in its centenary year, would produce a Budget without that centenary even being mentioned and without a penny in it to celebrate that centenary? It is a shame on every party that is part of the Government in this House that they collectively produced a Budget, so ashamed of the centenary of the place where they are the Government, in which it is not mentioned and there is not one penny to mark it. There is not a single penny for a community grant from the Department for Communities for those who might want to celebrate it. Nothing. <BR /> <BR />Indeed, Minister Murphy told us that not a single Department applied for a line in the Budget to mark the centenary. That is a staggering indictment, particularly of those who profess, outside of the House, their pride in Northern Ireland and this centenary.”
“Given the governmental system in which the Minister operates, will he clarify whether he is at liberty to bring a Bill to the House without the assent of the Executive? If he is not, does that mean that his best intentions, which are far preferable to what we have before us, can be stymied by other political parties, most particularly Sinn Féin, simply declining to give assent?”
“Will the Member care to reflect on the idiocy of what he has just said? He said that the protocol exists to protect east-west trade, but the protocol is, deliberately, the biggest barrier builder to east-west trade. Surely even the Member can grasp that and not lose his sense of reality as he fantasises in some euro-world.”
“If Mr Edwin Poots is as good as his word, that will have been one of the last North/South meetings until the Union-dismantling protocol is, itself, dismantled. As an enthusiast for the Belfast Agreement, the Minister must know that it is said to be built on the equilibrium of sustaining east-west relations and North/South relations. With the key east-west economic relations having been trashed by the protocol, surely the Minister is not ignorant as to why it is necessary, from a unionist perspective, to ensure that North/South relations do not continue as though that trashing of east-west relations had not occurred.”
“Speaking of indicator devices, does the Minister think that she might need a truth indicator device when it comes to the report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), given that a key premise of that report, namely that there was an events company with which the PSNI cooperated, not least on road safety, now turns out to be false? There was no such company, so how can the Minister sustain the position that she welcomes what she called "a comprehensive report"?”
“I heard the Member make fleeting reference to the situation with teachers. What is a teacher meant to do when a child is totally out of control? I saw that happen once, when I was chairman of a board of governors. I was in the school one morning and, from the noise, I could hear that a child was totally out of control. I looked into the classroom, and that child was utterly out of control. There was total disruption and violence. What was the teacher meant to do? Talking had failed. The class was being entirely disrupted. The parent could not deal with the situation. I read much in the motion about guaranteeing the rights of the child: that is good and fine, but what is the teacher meant to do? We cannot just say, "Apply UN this and that"; we need to be real.”
“— let us remember those who were murdered by its organisation.”
“— of Sinn Féin in constantly demanding special treatment and special status for Finucane —”