Pat Catney
Lagan Valley · Social Democratic and Labour Party · Northern Ireland
“I am delighted that he will get his own private Member's Bill through, which will bring equality, again, within teaching. He had to do a huge piece of work on the back of that. <BR /> <BR />It makes me proud to be part of this Assembly.”
“I am excited for the future. I will go back to the Minister. I have done so twice and will do it again. I do not know how the relationships required by the Bill's cross-cutting nature will go or which Department will hold the powers that the Bill provides to ensure that period products are available as widely as possible.”
“I have done that with every single Member whom I have met out there and talked to. I thank Members across the Chamber for their kind words to me personally today. This is not electioneering, folks, but I will tell you this. As we walk out and face the general public, no one knows what way they are going to go.”
“When I started out, I did not know the whole process of where or how it goes, but I know the process now, and I know that there is a lot of work, including from the civil servants. Mr Deputy Speaker, I will go back to tell you about when I had the little pub next door to Churchill House.”
“I will not be much longer, folks. I want to say that, as I was coming down this morning, I had the radio on, and I heard about an art project that is going on in Belfast. This may well be my last opportunity to speak about the ring of steel.”
“There was a bit of toing and froing, and I did not know which Department was going to lift the Bill and take up the chalice, which some people may have thought was a poisoned chalice. I thank the Minister, Deirdre, for taking that chalice. It was brave and correct to do that.”
The complete record
Every one of 680 lines we hold for Pat Catney, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 14 of 14.
“Thanks very much for giving way, Mr Givan. I hope that you will agree with me that, in the controlled atmosphere of a public house, publicans may still sell drink but that the day of the drunk man in the bar finished 20 years ago. You just do not see them any more. Most of the abuse is fuelled by cheap off-sales and people drinking at home. It is not coming from the controlled environment that is catered for within the structure of a public house.”
“There is no lighting for around three quarters of a mile along Station Road. Will the Minister give an update on lighting for that stretch of road?”
“First Minister, is it fair for me to ask that both you and the deputy First Minister make a commitment to having a conversation about the future of the site and the economic corridor where it is situated? Yes, that conversation should take into account the site's historical significance.”
“I thank the Minister. I agree with what he has already said; that the management of forests and woodlands is an undervalued area of the economy and is also critical to managing our climate impact. Can the Minister outline the contribution that the farming community can make to forest management, carbon storage and floodplain management as a public-good contribution?”
“Thank you, Minister, for that statement. This is important, given the size of our agri-food industry and its impact on our economy. Can the Minister give his assessment of the British Government's commitment to upholding food standards, following the Secretary of State's comments last week that he would give no assurances about maintaining alignment with safety standards following Brexit?”
“I thank the Member for giving way. On the subject of Casement Park, I remember the proposal being made to build a new stadium at the Maze. It was agreed between soccer, rugby and the GAA, but some politicians in here got themselves involved with a lobby. We could have had that brand new stadium sitting there without political interference. That is a fact. Windsor Park and the GAA had agreed to move out to the Maze. They are all victims of their own success. Money was spent on soccer and rugby and the GAA are entitled to the money for that plan as they see fit. Yes, the costs have risen, but that is not the fault of the GAA.”
“<BR /> <BR />We must have our eyes wide open to the scale of the challenges ahead. Delivering a strong, regionally balanced economy that works for everyone, with high-quality public services, will not be easy. However, I believe that, with some political will and a lot of hard work, we can get together to deliver better for everyone. <BR /> <BR />Mr Speaker, I wish to personally thank you and all the Members of the House for your kind words on the death of my mother and on the death of my nephew; it meant a lot to us. I just want to put on record my thanks to all who visited me or came up to me on the Floor or around the Building and to you, Mr Speaker, for your kind words. Thank you all.”
“The SDLP will work to ensure that our entrepreneurs are not priced off the local high street by unfair rates. <BR /> <BR />Businesses require certainty in order to thrive. As SDLP business and enterprise spokesman, I want to use my experience to help shape an agenda that ensures businesses have some degree of certainty — an agenda that creates an environment that lets our entrepreneurs pursue their hopes for their businesses and for their communities. For too long, there has been a lack of both central and local government support for those trying to create jobs. The SDLP will endeavour to help SMEs get the level of support that they need from government to thrive, with expert advice and guidance, and to ensure that they get paid on time and in full for the services and products that they provide to local government.”
“Now, you are not just saying goodbye to your children; you are saying goodbye to their husbands and your children's children. <BR /> <BR />I want to briefly add some thoughts as the SDLP business and innovation spokesman. As a former businessman, as I said earlier, I understand the issues that our businesses, particularly our SMEs, face and the complexities of issues that are at hand. I am sorry to keep going on about unfair rates, but I genuinely believe that they are unfair. If we want to try to grow our tourism industry, we need to look at those who are at the coalface and trying to grow it. I have spoken to the Minister, and I hope that he tries to take that on board or tries to unleash that potential or address the fear that is there.”
“The pressure on our public services is felt acutely in my own constituency of Lagan Valley, where our schools are at breaking point, people are waiting too long for medical appointments, and young families are struggling to get their first decent job or homes of their own. This Budget, and everything we do in the Chamber, needs to be about unlocking the potential of our people right across our community. We have a wealth of talent across Northern Ireland, with some of the most creative and courageous people in our midst. We must create an atmosphere in which they can thrive and are not forced abroad for decent jobs. I myself have had to go out to two girls; they went to China. It is a big loss in families when they go. I have one living in Munich now, and even that is a loss.”
“<BR /> <BR />As Members have clearly articulated, our public services and public servants are under intolerable pressure. They are at breaking point, and, in many cases, they are already broken. The pressures facing health, education, housing and our welfare system have reached crisis point. We must do better and deliver for our people across our community. I use that very strong word "community" because I do not see two; I see only one. I see us all together on this. If we want to build this, we have to do it together. If you are lifting a heavy load and we share that heavy load, it surely makes the weight much lighter. <BR /> <BR />We have been failed by stalemate and stagnation for far too long.”
“I am glad to be in the Chamber discussing issues that matter to our people — all our people — collectively. It took me more than 1,000 days to get the chance to make my maiden speech, so I warmly welcome the fact that we are finally here making decisions and standing up for people. <BR /> <BR />I want us to try to focus on the present; I do not want to look back. We have a past and we have a future. Instead of using one eye for looking back and one eye for looking forward, let us use both our eyes for the here and now and make where we live better. This is my home; I want it to be better. Every day of my life, I tried, as a self-employed man, to give employment for Northern Ireland and make it a better place that we can all live in and share.”
“On a serious note, is the Minister aware of the prohibitive rules for receiving free school transport? Will he address them, specifically to allow more students to avail themselves of that service and therefore cut down the reliance on the motor car?”
“I am sure that the Minister will agree with me, if he lets me move off the subject for a second, that, in mind of what happens this Saturday — that particular date — many a relationship has been struck up at school. I look at the glances back and forward across the Floor. Everyone who is single, be careful: it is a leap year on the 29th”
“The hospitality trade can be fickle, and those who find themselves invested in their premises will find themselves much levied upon. I agree with what Mr Frew said about increases in the sector. There must be a fairer methodology available to look at the rates, Minister. I, for one, am not sure that the current rating system is fit for purpose. I hope that the Minister will agree with me and look at ways in which to change it to make it fairer.”
“As a Member of this Chamber and as a grandfather, I must do all I can to make sure that the next generation can grow up in a world that allows its potential to flourish, and that is why I beg you all to support the motion and amendment No 1.”
“An independent EPA is vital to our achieving our goals for a cleaner and greener environment. I believe it to be so important that I made an election promise to bring forward a private Member's Bill to establish an independent EPA if it was not included in the Programme for Government. It is also a development that the SDLP has been calling for for a very long time, having first been proposed by my colleague Alex Attwood. I think that I speak for all of us and all our citizens when I say that I am glad that everyone else has caught up with this idea. <BR /> <BR />Over Christmas, I welcomed my third granddaughter into this world. It has been a time of great joy in our family, and I look at her and all my granddaughters and see the potential of all that is to come after me.”
“A wide-ranging plan of action does not have to be a complicated one. That has been shown by our colleagues in Dublin, who have committed to get one million electric vehicles on the road and 500,000 homes insulated and to move to 70% of power from renewable resources by 2030. I welcome the UK's ambitious goal of net zero emissions by 2050 but, to achieve it, we need to develop our list of simple and real waypoints towards that goal so that the people can keep us in check and moving forward every day. I hope to see Ministers bring forward some such proposals as soon as possible. <BR /> <BR />I want to highlight just one more policy. I was delighted to see the establishment of an independent environmental protection agency included in the New Decade, New Approach agreement.”
“These plans will not only see benefits in our environment. A move to a greener energy supply creates a more secure energy supply that is less vulnerable to global tensions that we cannot control. A greener economy not only cuts down waste but cuts down on cost, allowing our businesses to take home more of their hard-earned profits — probably to pay the rates. A greener public transport system not only reduces our emissions but creates a more connected and accessible society for us all that boosts productivity, innovation and well-being, from our rural towns to our modern cities. On a personal note, I would add that a lot of the infrastructure already exists, including the disused railway line that runs between Lisburn and Antrim, which I believe we should try to open up. All right, Minister, I got that in.”
“— to speak on this incredibly important motion. I am particularly glad that the motion brings the issue of the climate emergency to the Assembly Floor so soon after we have been able to re-form. This is not only because of the devastation the climate emergency will cause to Northern Ireland but because, in the past, many in the Chamber have expressed some curious views when it comes to climate change. Even former Ministers for the Environment have expressed some foolish views denying the existence of climate change. I hope that, in supporting the motion, the Assembly shows all the people of Northern Ireland that this really is a new decade and a new approach. <BR /> <BR />The climate emergency impacts on a wide range of areas. That is why our plan for tackling it needs to be broad and far-reaching.”
“We can never let such action occur again. <BR /> <BR />I am, however, very glad that I have the opportunity to use my maiden speech — sounds strange when you say "maiden speech" at the age that I am at, but anyhow”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I express my gratitude to the Speaker of the House for his role in going back and securing the funding for a little school called St John the Baptist. The school enhancement programme brought the Minister out to west Belfast to visit that school. For me, that was a wonderful example of how and in what way this place is meant to work. As the old advert says, "We're better together". <BR /> <BR />This is my maiden speech, 1,168 days since the people of Lagan Valley elected me to the Chamber. I come from the world of business. I got my first job in the bar at the age of 15, and I have worked ever since. I was elected to this Chamber to work, and it is disgraceful that we have not been able to work whilst people in our communities are suffering, whether from poverty, mental health or lack of a hospital bed.”
“I also welcome you to your post, Minister. I was engaged in the hospitality sector all my working life and I can tell you now that there is real fear out there. I ask you to engage with that sector in order to look at a fair, level playing field. I feel that it has been really hard done by. Taking on board what I have already said, will the Minister engage, as a matter of urgency, with the Minister of Finance and the Executive in the development of a new and innovative business rating system that is fit for purpose in our modern economy?”
“I did not hear the bell and was caught out. <BR /> <BR />I congratulate Mr Murphy on his appointment to the Ministry. I look down and I see £1 million being allocated for contaminated blood, but, alongside that, I see that the £5·2 million for the doctors and dentists has not come across. I would not like to think that this would in any way impact on the situation in our A&Es at the minute. <BR /> <BR />Just one other observation: when I did my accounts in my businesses, I was very lucky that there was a surplus. I was wondering if there was a way, within these two years —? I note that it is a one-year Budget. We need to move that to two years. Is there any way or any possibility of you trying to do that?”
“Mr Speaker, I apologise to you and the House for being late. Like an old pro boxer, I thought that there would be some sort of bell.”
“Séamus always filled me with this word, "Hope": today, I was filled with hope when I saw our First Minister and our deputy First Minister walking down that country loanin, for want of a better word, on the crossroads at Mullaghbrack. For that, I was glad to be at that service today. I rejoiced and felt uplifted to be there. <BR /> <BR />I also wish to pass on my sympathies to the Mallon family — to Orla, Mark and his little granddaughter — and to all my colleagues here who served with Séamus.”
“Farmers opened up their fields; locals came out; the GAA club came out; and neighbours of Séamus, regardless of their religion, were there to help them. That fits into my feeling of this one community that we all are. I am very lucky and privileged to be here today. <BR /> <BR />Unfortunately, when you come after so many other Members, you maybe lose the chance to say something, but I, like Daniel, noticed our First Minister and our deputy First Minister — Conor, our Finance Minister, was also with them — down there today. That filled me full of hope. It reminded me of the story of that terrible incident — I do not really want to speak about it — when my neighbour, David Trimble, along with Séamus Mallon, walked down through Poyntzpass to the scene of the murder of those two young friends. I thought again what a gesture we had today.”
“This weekend, I had business in Connemara, in a little town called Clifden. Clifden is the old seat of the British in the west of Ireland; it is an absolutely beautiful little place. During the summer, Séamus went down to open the arts festival there. As I walked around the town over the weekend, so many people came up to me. They had fond memories of him. Yesterday, I rang my colleague Justin McNulty to try to convey that message on, but I was lucky enough when I got to the house this morning. When we arrived at the house in Mullaghbrack, it reminded me so much of where I come from: a little place outside Moira, Kilwarlin. That is also a predominantly unionist constituency. People here have spoken about the coming together of that community, but all of them came together to give him a fitting send-off in that place.”
“With that school being closed down, the vandalism and the children trying to go there, in the enveloping of that school, can you and your officials try to keep to a minimum the length of time and the disruption?”
“Minister, like everyone else here, I wish you the best of luck in your portfolio as the Education Minister and every success in that going forward. <BR /> <BR />I thank the officials that have met with me over the one school that was here today, St John the Baptist. It borders on my constituency, but I was asked by parents to meet the board of governors and the school. I am delighted that this is now being put forward as a school enhancement project. Little St John the Baptist has had half its school closed. Minister, I do not want to infringe on your time, but, if at all possible, you will see what that will do and how it will transform that whole area.”