Diana Armstrong calls for end to 'ransom politics' at Stormont - and accuses Dublin of 'stealth tactics' over shared island funding
UUP deputy leader Diana Armstrong has said Northern Ireland cannot afford another decade of “stop-start government, where one party can pull the whole house down whenever it suits them”.
She said the people of Northern Ireland “have been held to ransom for long enough” – and want politics to work. That is why, she said, the UUP is calling for reform of the Stormont institutions.
In his speech, Jon Burrows said that he wanted an end to the ability of one party to collapse the institutions.
Mrs Armstrong also accused the Irish government of “stealth tactics” – claiming that its ‘shared island’ funding is “reaching into narrower and narrower corners of life here”.
“This party has never been afraid of cooperation with our neighbours. The Belfast Agreement set out where that cooperation belongs: agriculture, health, tourism, trade”, she said.
“What we are seeing now is something different. . And next year’s elections will be the first ever fought with an Irish Government media fund operating in Northern Ireland. Fourteen million euro, administered by a regulator appointed in Dublin, with money set aside for journalism that ‘supports shared understanding across the island’.
“Of all the places to put political money, the media is the most delicate of all.
“This is not about the integrity of any journalist. It is about something harder to repair: the perception of a free and impartial press. In a divided society, perception is everything.
“A press trusted by one community and suspected by the other serves neither”.