Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The majority of the citizens in the North voted to remain in the EU. Most polls show that the majority of citizens in the North either support the protocol or can live with it. The Good Friday Agreement is meant to put the will of the people at the heart of the direction of the North of Ireland yet we have the DUP, which is a minority party with a minority view, holding the whole of the North to ransom at the moment. Stormont is dysfunctional, broken and is not working for the people at the moment, which the Taoiseach himself admitted.

There are 44,000 people in the North on housing waiting lists, 4,200 homeless and on the streets, 250,000 living in poverty and 250,000 on hospital waiting lists for more than a year. We need to move beyond Stormont as it is currently constituted. The institutions need to be fully reformed so that no one party can ever tear it down again. When will there be a 32-county citizens’ assembly to redesign the new institutions in the North to prevent this happening again?

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