DUP are standing against Stormont madness and backing common sense government - Lyons
The DUP is standing against “madness” in the Assembly on issues like gender and climate change rules, communities minister Gordon Lyons has said.
Speaking to the News Letter at the party’s annual conference on Saturday, he said Sinn Fein, Alliance and the SDLP are more concerned “about looking good than actually doing good” – arguing “that's the big problem that we face in our politics today”.
With another debate on Alliance’s proposed law to ban “conversion practices” looming on Tuesday, Mr Lyons said the party are trying to “get involved in family life and what can be said in in churches” – and the MLA behind it didn’t appear to understand its consequences.
“It’s about what looks progressive, what looks compassionate, rather than what's actually going to do good for people in Northern Ireland.
“The climate change bill was a fantastic example of that. People were determined to put in the most stringent targets possible. That's coming at a huge financial cost to us now, but it doesn't seem as if they care.
“It was more important to do the virtue signalling rather than to actually deliver on issues. And as a result, we can't build the A5. And as a result, as the independent advice at that time said, it's going to cost us £900 million a year more to deliver on these targets.
“So this is the type of madness we stand against, and why we need common sense in government”, the DUP minister said.
He said that people “should come out and vote DUP next year to have more common sense in government” – something he said his party has delivered.