DUP prevaricating and wriggling on Committee Chair is holding up Stormont to public ridicule - UUP Chief Negotiator
Ulster Unionist Party Chief Negotiator Alan McFarland today criticised DUP efforts to force the Speaker Eileen Bell to chair the Committee for Preparation for Government.
Mr McFarland said that Mrs Bell did not want to do it, that the proposal would have compromised the impartial role of the Speaker and that the DUP were engaged in ‘pure evasion’ running away from an arrangement that means a rotating chair amongst the parties.
Ultimately, added the UUP Chief Negotiator, if the DUP could not even manage to agree to a chair for a Committee it spelt out their lack of vision and determination for progress to be made.
In a statement Mr McFarland said,
“It is a sad indictment that due to obstruction from the DUP, we cannot perform the simple task of appointing a Chair for the Committee. The ridiculousness of the situation does not bode well for the future.
This is an exercise in pure evasion. In the last Assembly the DUP sat in Committees with Chairs from other political parties day in, day out. Now they bizarrely seem opposed to a rotating Chair system.
Mrs Bell has indicated that she does not wish to chair the Committee. We respect her decision. There is no precedent in any other Parliament for the Speaker of the House to chair a committee. The proposal would have compromised the impartial role of the Speaker.
The rest of the parties are keen to ensure that progress can be made in this Committee. We want to identify the pressure points standing in the way of a return to devolution. The prevarication and petty wriggling by the DUP is preventing the potential for progress and holding us all up to public ridicule.”