O'Conall Street

Public meeting – attacks on the elderly

Representatives from the PSNI, Age Concern Help the Aged NI and Belfast City Council have been invited to attend the public meeting which will take place on Thursday 11th March at 7pm in St Brides Parish Hall, Derryvolgie Avenue, Belfast.

I am organising this meeting to give concerned residents the opportunity to speak to local representatives and statutory agencies to voice their concerns about the latest burglaries. I would urge as many people as possible to come along and be apart of the community response to these attacks.

It is important that we pull together as a community and work alongside the statutory agencies to ensure that these attacks on the elderly members of our community are put to an end.

Regional action on ‘legal highs’ needed

It was disappointing to get news yesterday that the Health Minister has missed the second British Irish Council meeting in a row to discuss the misuse of drugs in Britain and Ireland .
 
He is sending out all the wrong signals about tackling the drugs trade and consumption across these islands. Last week’s meeting of the British Irish Council discussed the availability of legal highs as well as the drugs crisis in prisons.
 
Minister McGimpsey should have been present for this important discussion to demonstrate his commitment to tackling this problem. He needs to send a much stronger message about the need to deal the drugs crisis, which is particularly severe here in Northern Ireland .
 
Some paramilitaries are now taking matters into their own hands against legal high outlets.
 
Along with the justice agencies, the Minister needs to take much greater control over this issue and move very quickly to control the import and distribution of legal highs as well as educating young people as to the serious health risks these present.
 
The British Irish Council will not meet to discuss drugs for another year.
 
It is time for the Minister for Health to bring forward proposals immediately to deal with legal highs.

Alliance Party fail to support Bill of Rights in key Assembly vote

The Alliance Party engaged in some political gymnastics yesterday to avoid having to support a motion calling for a strong Bill of Rights.

Having voted in favour of an SDLP amendment which strengthened the motion, Alliance MLAs with the exception of Stephen Farry made a bee-line for the door to avoid havingto vote on the substantive motion. Mr Farry stayed in the chamber and abstained in person.

Why?

Well I can only surmise that they did not think the amendment would pass and when it did they panicked because it might embarrass their new bosses in the DUP if the the Assembly were seen to support a Bill of Rights.

I thought my colleague Dolores Kelly put it well:

We had generally assumed that Alliance were on the side of the angels on human rights in general and the long, hard struggle for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights in particular. The motion before the Assembly was critical of the British government’s approach which ignores the work done by local people on the Human Rights Commission and Forum, including Alliance members.

We called on the government to extend the current consultation on a bill of rights and Alliance supported our amendment. But when it came to the substantive motion they suddenly disappeared and it was voted down by the unionists.

The issue of rights strongly protected and enforced in law goes right to the heart what has divided our society, and in our view a Bill of Rights has the ability to take basic human and civil rights completely out of the party-political arena. Today they went back into the arena with a bump due to the increasingly odd behaviour of the Alliance party.  We hope this does not represent some new departure or unionist line-up as part of dropping their claim to be an opposition party. That would be a great blow to our hopes of a shared future.

Derry execution to lead Assembly business

A series of statements on the execution of Kieran Doherty in Derry last week will be the first item of business in the Assembly today.

Mark Durkan will lead and remind the Assembly that the murder bears the hallmarks of the old Provo-style ‘execution’ which people had hoped was in our past.

You can follow it live at noon here:

http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/stream.htm

Come celebrate the Festival of Holi in Belfast today

Today  Belfast celebrates the Festival of Holi. 

A time when Hindu’s celebrate the triumph of ‘good’ over ‘bad’. The colorful festival is a time to bridge social gaps and renew sweet relationships. Its also famous for the ‘colour fights’ when crowds hurl coloured power at each other.

If you want to be part of the fun and celebration get yourself down to George’s Market between 1pm and 6pm today.

If you care about education, watch this….

This is the story of homework clubs with a difference and about really tapping into what we now call the social capital of a town. If you are interested in education, in children or in language watch it. By the way Roddy Doyle has recently opened one in Dublin called Fighting Words.

Platform for Change is launched

I have had the pleasure of being a member of the Platform for Change Management Committee for the past year or so. The Platform was launched today in Belfast.

It’s been an exciting time and great to see so many people, members of political parties, business types, community activists and ordinary citizens get involved in a political debate about the issues that matter to them.

The consultation meetings which took place with hundreds of people over the past six months were a real breath of fresh air. They proved to me that there is a huge appetite for real politics here in Northern Ireland and that people want their politicians focussed on the issues that matter.

I am in the Assembly to make the North work. Our ambition must be to build a strong region on Irish soil while respecting its inhabitants diverging national aspirations. The SDLP wants to make the North work because a strong North means a stronger Ireland. This is surely an ambition which we can share with the vast majority of people in this region. Platform for Change can play a big part in making Northern Ireland work.

Apology for child deportees welcome. Now lets see justice for the children who stayed and were abused

Patrick Murphy was born 16th March 1945 and forcibily sent to Australia from Nazareth Lodge in Belfast three years later. This morning he welcomed the Prime Minister’s decision to apologise to all the children sent to the other side of the world without their consent from the late forties to the early seventies. 

Today’s apology is long overdue and will mean a huge amount to those little children, Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh, effectively deported from their own land by a state with a misguided aim.

Yesterday some of the other boys a girls who lived in Nazareth Lodge in Belfast with Patrick and who allege they were abused by the nuns who were caring for them met with Fr Tim Bartlett. It was the first in what will be many conversations about the past but an important first step.

The Minister for Health and I had an exchange in the Assembly too yesterday about the need for the Northern Ireland Executive to accept it has a duty towards the survivors of Nazareth Lodge and other homes. Whilst I do not for one minute doubt Micheal McGimpsey’s personal desire to see justice for these people, there is no indication as of yet that that his department or the Executive is ready to push the issue hard and send a clear signal to the survivors and wider society that this is a wrong that must be righted and soon.

New health budget needed now

The Assembly is debating the massive increase forecast in dementia numbers in this region today.  The Minister for Health is also making a statement on the North – South Ministerial Council - Health. 

I have asked the Minister to give a commitment to bring forward a Health budget which is capable of protecting front line services and maximising the savings available through closer North – South cooperation. 

We are currently spending £50 million a year on dementia in this region, yet the numbers people suffering from the disease will triple here in the next forty years bringing the total to around 50,000.  Experts estimate we will need to be investing some £200 million in coming decades to ensure adequate support for dementia sufferers.

The Minister’s unwillingness to provide any information on how he proposes to defend front line services and essential research will threaten many patient’s care. The Minister needs to bring forward now a new health budget which can give us all the assurance that the stealth cuts in front lines services will stop and stop now.

Fairtrade Fortnight starts today – Executive need to do a lot more

The Executive is not doing enough to promote Fairtrade products within the public sector and its International Development strategy which is now two years overdue.

I’ll be at the launch of Fairtrade Fortnight today in Parliament Buildings. They are calling it the “The Big Swap” this year and consumers are being invited to switch a regular item for a Fairtrade substitute.

The Executive should be leading by example by encouraging the procurement of Fairtrade products in all of its departments to demonstrate the North’s commitment to ethical trading.

Yes there is some commitment to using Fairtrade tea and coffee, but no steps have been taken to ensure that there is the option to purchase Fairtrade cotton uniforms or bed linen in the Health service.

 The Minister for Education has also confirmed that she is not aware of a single school which includes a Fairtrade option in its school meals contracts.

Sales of Fairtrade products now top €2.3billion annually. This puts money directly in the pockets of some 1.5million farmers in the world’s poorest countries, benefiting an estimated 8 million people.

Here in these islands consumers have embraced Fairtrade. Sales are doubling every year. It is time the Executive caught up and showed a real commitment to the developing world by creating sustainable trade opportunities for small nations.

The Executive is totally out of step with thinking in the North, given that Belfast is the only city in the UK and Ireland to be awarded dual accreditation as a fairtrade city, acknowledging the commitment demonstrated by people in the city to Fairtrade products.

Today, I am calling on the First and Deputy First Ministers to publish their strategy on International Development and to review their procurement policies to ensure that Fairtrade is promoted within the Departments and that consumers are given the opportunity to choose Fairtrade and help promote better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.