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Tue 9th March
However, the South Down Assembly Member said today’s vote in the Assembly was not an endorsement of the Hillsborough Arrangement.
She said the SDLP still had serious concerns about the integrity of the process and the gerrymandering of the Justice ministry.
She said: “The SDLP very much welcomes the transfer of justice and policing responsibilities from Westminster to Stormont. We believe it should have happened a long time ago.
“The air of crisis that surrounds policing and justice results from the fact that people have not been honest. Three years ago Sinn Fein claimed they had secured DUP agreement to Justice and Policing Devolution in the St Andrews Agreement.
“This was compounded by the silence of both Governments – who allowed the inaccurate Sinn Fein version of events to go unchallenged. While acknowledging their desire to deliver progress, I have to say that the two governments have not distinguished themselves on this issue.
“Then we have the gerrymandering around the appointment of a Justice Minister. A DUP concern about the possibility of a Sinn Fein Justice Minister has become a DUP veto on any nationalist minister - with the blessing of Sinn Fein. This is despite the fact that the established system for appointing ministers says that the next additional ministry goes to nationalists.
“Yet we will witness in the coming weeks the sight of Sinn Fein, trying to engineer a situation in this chamber, where they can appear to be voting for Alban Maginness, despite having designed a process which guarantees that he cannot be appointed. And we will see a display of phoney reluctance from others who have no democratic right to this position.
“And to cap it all the DUP will lecture us along the lines that a cross-community vote in the Assembly is the finest form of democracy. Or that five parties is surely more democratic than four. Again carve-up politics disguised as inclusive government.
“Then we come to the Hillsborough arrangement - heralded yet again as ‘historic’ by the DUP/Sinn Fein and their cheerleaders.
“So let me nail the latest spin. A vote for the transfer of Policing and Justice powers is not an endorsement of the Hillsborough package. Martin McGuiness has been peddling this line all week. He is wrong.
“The SDLP supports the devolution of Policing and Justice as we always have. We do so without equivocation for the greater good of our community. But because of Hillsborough, we are deeply concerned about the integrity of this process.”
Email
m.ritchie@sdlp.ie
Tel 028 4461 2882
Tel 028 90 52 1837
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