Speeches by Robinson.

“The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has just heard from the chief constable of the PSNI, Jon Boutcher, who indicated that the Secretary of State has put in a claim to the Treasury for additional hundreds of millions of pounds to fund the legacy commission, yet the PSNI has nothing. It has £200 million of civil liabi…”

“You have given courtesy to the Department of Justice, which is seemingly showing no interest whatsoever. Have you spoken to the Justice Minister about this? What has Naomi Long said?”

“It was in Short Strand. I was there.”

“I was in one of them.”

“I get the point you are making, and I understand the complexity. I can be political about what I say, and you will not. I get all of that, but all it took was for a member of your Policing Board to condemn a bomb scare and to condemn dissident republicans who are trying to create the atmosphere that precludes young mem…”

“The Department of Justice knows the importance of policing, community involvement in policing, and community support for and trust in policing. It knows that the review was commissioned. It even published the outcome of the review, but it has not given a view in 12 months.”

“Yesterday, Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Féin was asked, on the BBC, if a young person from her community came to her and said they wished to pursue a career in the PSNI, whether she would support them. Her response was that, if that is what they want to do, that is okay. I understand that this is uncomfortable when it is a m…”

“For 400 vacancies, applications from the Catholic community are more than 150% over that. That is a good thing. The reason why I am bringing it out is because it has been absent from the discourse. It would sound as if only a quarter of available positions can be filled by Catholics. Actually, more than 1,000 individua…”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“That is just a little over.”

“Why?”

“1,000 of those applications are from members of the Catholic community.”

“There have been 4,000 applications.”

“Yes.”

“That is good timing. I am going to talk about workforce composition. You will be very well aware that, in the last fortnight or so, there has been renewed focus on workforce composition. I know it is a rather outdated, quaint concept, but, whenever I phone the police, I am not interested in seeing somebody who looks li…”

“It does not sound like political dominance in this case. It sounds like political absence.”

“We have had the Sweeney review. We have had the Scoffield judgment in 2023. Mr Justice Scoffield did a quite lengthy review into the Policing Board at your request. You commissioned him to do extensive reviews. Following the review, the Department of Justice has published the independent review to the board, but what a…”

“It was four weeks ago. That is 11 months to get to the Minister’s desk and four weeks to sit on the Minister’s desk, aside from being imminent, which, in political terms, can mean months.”

“I thank the Chancellor for recognising the disproportionate reliance on home heating oil in Northern Ireland, but the £17 million made available for half a million homes reliant on oil equates to £34 per household, and there is no data to target that support. There is £81 million available from the renewables obligatio…”

“Ballymoney this Saturday, Minister.”