Gerry Carroll: ...falling for it. The Executive parties here should be ashamed for failing our most vulnerable children, putting countless families through the wringer and treating education workers with absolute contempt. Almost every day, I speak to parents who have to go through the torture of navigating the pitfalls in the SEND sector: being unable to have their child assessed; being unable to get a...
Gerry Carroll: Throughout the pandemic, I have said that the Executive have shown contempt and disdain for the normal practices of accountability, scrutiny and allowing MLAs who are not on the Executive to look at, scrutinise and suggest amendments or different paths to the approaches taken by Ministers, including on legislation. Today is another example of that approach. Legislation that has not been...
Gerry Carroll: ...obstacles and adversity placed in front of them. However, the same cannot be said of Boris Johnson or his ministerial colleagues, who went into hiding last week and treated the families with utter contempt. At first, there was no apology; then one was eventually issued in secret. There was no attempt to empathise or sympathise with the families. Despite his pronouncements, Boris and the...
Gerry Carroll: "With the contempt that it deserves", he says. I am well aware of that, given yesterday's comments and optics, with his side of the House having a meltdown with the talk of basic socialist policies. I think that he is still hurting from Trump's defeat in America [Laughter.] Indeed, I have enough experience of having radical ideas about the redistribution of wealth being met with sneering and...
Gerry Carroll: ...should not be questioned only behind closed doors or by those who walk the corridors of Stormont. A public hearing, public scrutiny and those who vote MLAs to the Chamber should not be held in such contempt. In the past few months that we have sat in this seemingly reformed Assembly, only a handful of times have the Executive parties openly voted against one another, so who can really have...