Alliance party leader Naomi Long has described Stormont voting rules for parties that identify as neither unionist nor nationalist as “affront to democracy” and said a potential legal challenge to them was being explored.
At the party’s annual conference in Belfast on Saturday, Ms Long told delegates that the current system – under which key decisions must be carried by a majority nationalist or unionist vote – is “unacceptable” at a time when Alliance is the third biggest Assembly party.
The Irish Times understands that the party has consulted with lawyers on whether the rules are compliant with human rights and if a challenge can be mounted in court.
Addressing a packed conference room, Ms Long received loud applause when she called for an overhaul of the Assembly’s “rigid designation system”.
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“We remain frozen by the system’s inherent vetoes and an unwillingness to embrace change,” she said.
“To sit in the chamber and listen to others wax lyrical about being treated like second class citizens, when their votes count for more than ours is frankly an affront to democracy. Not only is it not acceptable, it might well be unlawful, and conference, we are willing to put that to the test if we have to.
“Because this isn’t just about us as a political party and the way in which our votes and our voters are made count for less. It is about how ransom politics disadvantages everyone in Northern Ireland.”
Following last May’s Assembly election, Alliance more than doubled its seats to 17, leapfrogging the UUP and SDLP.
Ms Long insisted that reforming the power-sharing structures set up under the Belfast Agreement was not a “rejection” of the landmark 1998 deal but “simply to acknowledge that, with the passage of time, the changes in our society - and with the benefit of having tested the structures in practice - there is a necessity for reform”.
The North has been without a functioning government for a year after the DUP collapsed the Executive over its ongoing opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol. The Alliance leader said the impasse is “ruining people’s lives and jeopardising” the Belfast Agreement.
“By responding to those who up-end the institutions by pandering to their demands time after time, rather than ending their ability to do so, they are condemning devolution to death by a thousand collapses,” Ms Long said.
In January, Assembly members had their pay cut by 27 per cent – or around £14,000 - by Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris amid the continuing political deadlock.
Ms Long accepted that while there may be “next to no public sympathy” for MLAs living on reduced salaries, it would be “fairer still” if “those blocking restoration were not paid at all until they are willing to return to work and let the rest of us do so, too”.
Singling out the resignation of Alliance MLA Dr Patricia O’Lynn, who holds a PhD in education and was elected last May for the first time after unseating DUP stalwart Mervyn Storey in North Antrim, Ms Long said Ms O’Lynn’s decision to take up a post in Queen’s University Belfast was “part of the price we all pay for the failure of the institutions”.
“If we want the Assembly to attract the kind of MLAs and staff we need and retain them, the best of what Northern Ireland has to offer, then it needs to function. It needs to work,” she told delegates.
On the Windsor Framework deal agreed between the UK government and European Union, the former justice minister said it could not have been achieved had Boris Johnson remained in power. As far as post-Brexit trading arrangements go, the basic tests appear to have been “largely achieved”, she added.
But she raised concerns about the implementation of the new ‘Stormont Brake’ mechanism, designed to give Stormont politicians more say on EU law, and said she hopes it “does not act to further destabilise Stormont”.
“It is, therefore, imperative that the threshold for use of the Brake is clearly defined in legislation, and is enforceable and justiciable, rather than merely aspirational.”
