Speeches by Robinson.

“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 I know it is a rather outdated, quaint concept, but, whenever I phone the police, I am not interested in seeing somebody who looks li…”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.”

“How long were the answers?”

“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.”

“This is about role models. I may be stealing somebody’s thunder here—I do not know about prepared questions and all the rest. When we did a visit in Northern Ireland, we went to Larne Football Club. There was this white ribbon campaign and there were some wonderful opportunities to encourage young guys through role mod…”

“Every case has its own individual elements. Whenever I am given an example of a case in my constituency that is going to have very specific feelings, I ask: are there lessons to be learned for those who have failed, not just locally but also across the nation, so that you can take account of failings and see whether th…”

“Finally, I wonder how granular this becomes, from thinking of a case in my constituency—that of Rachel Simpson, who was murdered by a family member. I am not sure it will come to trial. It could come to trial. Throughout my involvement with the family, before her death and since, it is clear there are a huge number of …”

“Is that in England, Minister, or across all the devolved nations?”

“I know from time that I spent behind the scenes in government that there are joint ministerial committees coming out of the Cabinet Office’s ears, but there is not one on ending violence against women and girls. Do you think that it would be useful to have a ministerial co-ordinating group across the devolved nations, …”