27 April 2026
Recent remarks on the need for reform of Stormont must be more than cynical rhetoric from Sinn Féin, SDLP Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole has said after Michelle O’Neill refused to offer detail on her party’s position during Assembly questions today.
The SDLP Opposition has consistently championed the need to change how devolved institutions work, including practical reforms on ending ministerial vetoes, making it harder to block the election of a Speaker and ending the differentiation of titles in the First Ministers.
Sinn Féin has consistently resisted or delayed efforts to agree reforms, so the SDLP welcomed a change to the party’s rhetoric which emerged at its weekend Ard Fheis – but its representatives have refused to provide any substantive detail.
Matthew O’Toole MLA said:
“Sinn Féin has consistently stifled, blocked or obfuscated on any progress towards reforming our broken politics. And we all know why: the status quo has suited them and the DUP rightly.
"But 20 years of their joint misrule, pocked by multiple collapses, and the failure to deliver anything of substance, from the A5 to Casement to an agreed Budget, mean they have had to offer some rhetorical commitment to changing how politics works here.
“Yet when I asked Michelle O’Neill today, she had little more than platitudes to offer. As with a whole range of other unmet aspirations, the public is jaded with empty rhetoric from Sinn Féin ministers which goes nowhere.
"These words must be backed by real substance and real proposals which parties can progress. If this is just another rhetorical intervention with no substance, public cynicism will only grow – and we simply can’t afford that.”