Editorial: The suspension of Timothy Gaston from Stormont has been a farcical reflection on MLAs

​In a breathtaking display of Stormont incompetence, one of its MLAs is currently suspended for a mildly inappropriate comment.

In 2024, the TUV’s Timothy Gaston was in the committee that examines the executive office on the day Michelle O’Neill ​appeared over Sinn Fein safeguarding.

He has been reprimanded for, in effect, asking so many questions of the proceedings – queries deemed not within the remit of the committee –and for telling committee chair Paula Bradshaw “to breathe” when things got heated between them. Mr Gaston has since apologised.

It is staggering, however, that Mr Gaston has been suspended after a report by the then standards commissioner about this. We will continue to examine that report. For now, MLAs are made to look like thin-skinned, or perhaps just partisan, fools. Have they not watched proceedings, in the mother of all parliaments, Westminster? Politicians get passionate over important matters.

MLAs as a whole look bad in this contemptible saga because they voted to suspend Mr Gaston, when his imperfect conduct could have been dealt with in far much less draconian ways.

But while that is all bad enough, the context of this suspension is barely believable. Ms Bradshaw had met Ms O’Neill in the latter’s office prior to the evidence session. To put it mildly this is irregular. Any MLA who reflects on such a meeting should immediately be alarmed that the chair who is presiding over the grilling of the witness in fact met them beforehand.

Ms Bradshaw says this was about the process of the meeting, to ensure it was within the committee’s remit. The commissioner said Mr Gaston undermined the authority of the chair. But the TUV MLA had driven questioning about the O’Neill meeting, which needed serious scrutiny.

Farcically, we now do not know what happened in that meeting, yet Mr Gaston is suspended.