Colum Eastwood says those who threatened Jeffrey Donaldson are ‘not fit to lace his boots’

Derry Journal

Transcript

00:00 I am a proud Unionist. I am proud to be part of this United Kingdom. I am proud

00:06 to have served my country in this Parliament for almost 27 years. I'm proud

00:13 of the service that I've given, unlike some others, to my country when I put on

00:17 the uniform of the Ulster Defence Regiment to protect everyone in the

00:22 community from terrorism and violence. And yet today, because of the stirring up

00:28 that is going on, I was threatened. Threatened. By those who never put on a

00:37 uniform. By those who haven't served our country. And when I checked out, one of

00:44 the people who threatened me, on the register, didn't vote at the last

00:49 election. Can't even come out to vote for our future in the Union, never mind do

00:57 anything about it. And yet they're threatening people like me, who's working

01:01 day and night to try and find solutions and to move Northern Ireland forward on

01:05 a basis that the vast majority of people can't support.

01:10 Can I begin by saying the Right Honourable Member for Lagan Valley and I haven't agreed on very much recently.

01:17 In fact, it kind of drives me crazy. And we don't agree on much of what we've

01:23 debated today over the past couple of years. But I do strongly believe that he

01:29 comes at this from a position of strong belief. He comes at it in an attempt to

01:35 represent his constituents. He comes at it from a good place. It's a different

01:40 place than me. And we want to end up in a different place. And maybe I would argue

01:45 he's helping us along in that regard. But I do say this very clearly. Those people

01:52 who have threatened him today couldn't lace his boots. And every single

01:58 Democrat in this House or elsewhere should stand in

02:03 solidarity with any of us who are being attacked like that. I think we are in a

02:09 more hopeful place than we have been today. I was expecting last week to come

02:14 and have to debate a much wider piece of legislation that would have seen us

02:20 going in a different direction. If this today symbolizes that we're getting

02:27 closer at least to a resolution, then I think we have to welcome it. And we have

02:32 to give it space. There is nobody more frustrated than me at the slowness of

02:39 this process. There is nobody, I think, who has expressed frustration more than me

02:44 about how we've got into this situation. Of course it's nearly two years now

02:48 since we've had a government in Northern Ireland. Just before that we had COVID,

02:52 which is a very strange time. And before that we had three and a half years after

02:55 Sinn Féin brought the government down of having no government. People in Northern

03:00 Ireland now feel like the default setting is to have no government. That

03:05 just isn't good enough. And any of us in this place who really believes in

03:10 devolution, who really put their shoulder to the wheel around this peace process,

03:14 need to ensure that we can very soon have democratically elected politicians

03:20 in Northern Ireland dealing with these issues. Because I do find it frankly

03:25 embarrassing at the state of our health service. I was reading some figures the

03:29 other day about dementia diagnoses. Some people in the western

03:37 part of Northern Ireland are waiting almost six years to get diagnosed with

03:42 dementia. In what modern democracy should that be seen as acceptable? I mean we are

03:48 very lucky that people aren't on the streets in uproar at those kind of

03:54 figures. The public sector is being tied together by a string. Our health service

04:02 is at the point, if not beyond the point, of collapse. And it isn't the fault of

04:07 those people who've been asked to go into the tough places, do the tough

04:12 work for very little pay. And we had an amendment to this bill and we

04:17 understand the bill is very narrow in scope today, calling on the Secretary of

04:21 State to pay those workers. There were 175,000 people in the cold and the snow on

04:27 picket lanes last week across Northern Ireland. Now I think people will know my

04:32 preference is that the DUP go back into government as soon as possible, that we

04:36 have democratically elected people making those decisions and we get that

04:39 money into people's pockets. But I am absolutely furious that those ordinary

04:44 workers have been used as a political pawn because of our political failure. It

04:49 is absolutely unacceptable. Those people need their pay raised today. They're the

04:55 people holding this thing together. They're the people who we've asked to go

04:59 and do the tough things for very little reward. There is no excuse anymore for

05:04 that money not getting paid. And if there's a technical reason for it, I'll

05:07 come back tomorrow and we can debate a budget bill if the Secretary of State

05:10 wants about getting money into those people's pockets. There is no technical

05:14 reason as to why those people cannot get paid. We have talked about solutions. We've

05:22 got lots of solutions and I noticed that the Member for North Down talks

05:27 about reform. We're up for that conversation about reform. In fact we had

05:29 an amendment today that would have got I think the Assembly back up and running

05:33 again if we used a different mechanism for electing the Speaker as at least a

05:39 first point. We also understand that we have to get a proper reformed

05:44 institutions at Stormont. But my strong view is the best way to have that

05:49 conversation is whilst we have a government and an executive in Stormont.

05:54 Because I do fear that we would end up in a five-year negotiation about what

05:58 reform would look like and all the while we still wouldn't have

06:02 a government in Stormont, locally elected people dealing with

06:06 the people's concerns. Some of us in this chamber have been through many long

06:11 negotiations and know you can go into a negotiation wanting to fix one little

06:14 thing. Five years later you haven't fixed that thing and you've done three or four

06:19 different things that nobody asked for in the first place. So I think we need to

06:21 be cautious about that. We need to be committed to reform. But the first thing

06:25 that has to happen is the people who were elected to represent people in

06:29 Northern Ireland, the First Minister who was elected to be the First Minister,

06:32 they should be in place. They should be allowed to do the job that they're

06:36 elected to do and then we can have a proper discussion about how we reform

06:40 our institutions. Because a blind man on a galloping horse could tell you we have

06:44 to reform those institutions because frankly they're not working. And I would

06:48 make one plea today to all other political parties and I'll make the

06:53 commitment myself that the next time if we do get Stormont back up and running,

06:57 the next time that a particular political party has a major disagreement,

07:01 can we have a discussion about that and can we all commit not to pulling the

07:06 institutions down. The edifice of government should not be the first thing

07:10 that goes when we have a difficult decision to make and I think that would

07:14 take us a long way. Look I'm glad that we've come to this point. I think

07:19 it tells us something about the direction of travel. I think the history

07:24 of our place should remind us all that at some point we always have to

07:30 take on our own dissidents whether they're within our own party and our own

07:34 community, on social media or wherever they reside. But they need to be taken on

07:39 because the broad swathe of opinion whether they're nationalist or unionist

07:43 or not interested, want ordinary people to be looked after. They want their

07:48 health service properly resourced. They want their schools properly functioning.

07:53 They want their public sector workers paid properly.

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