Poots' porkies
18 October 2007
Statement by Jim Allister MEP:
“In the Assembly debate on 16 October 2007 on the Irish language Edwin Poots said of me, “He must have been satisfied by the outcome of the first consultation process because he did not want the second one to proceed.”
Even making allowance for the Minister’s attraction to cheap political point-scoring, I am astounded that anyone claiming an attachment to honest and honourable behaviour in public life could make such a calumnious suggestion.
Mr Poots knows perfectly well that I have always opposed the two Irish Language Act consultations and described both as flawed.
On 2 March 2007 I wrote to his predecessor about the first consultation document in terms which included the following, “You will note, for the reasons argued in my response, I am calling on you to withdraw this flawed proposal, not least because the consultations themselves are irredeemably deficient”.
On 3 March 2007 I issued a public statement on the first consultation headed, “IRISH LANGUAGE ACT CONSULTATION IRREDEEMABLY FLAWED”.
In that statement I said, “I have never seen such a shoddy consultation document from any government department. It is irredeemably flawed. The commitment to legislate was clearly made in brazen disregard of the requirements of Section 75. Having exposed its deficiencies I am now calling on DCAL to withdraw its proposal.”
In my 97 page response to the first consultation I systematically dissected it and exposed its multiple flaws. Among my contentions was, “This, therefore, is a proposal which should be withdrawn as being irreparably flawed and produced by a process incompatible with statutory obligation.
On the very day Mr Poots came to office I wrote to him urging him to withdraw the second consultation because it was the product of the first flawed consultation. I referred him to my response to the first consultation document for details as to how equality and other procedures were fundamentally breached. I then said to him, “The second consultation, being the product of the first, cannot escape the same corrupting consequences.”
Mr Poots must also know that I have a complaint with the Equality Commission against his Department because of the flaws in the first consultation document.
Thus how he could stoop to suggest to the Assembly that I “must have been satisfied by the outcome of the first consultation process”, is astonishing.
I will regard it as a test of his probity as to how he rights the wrong which he knows he has done to me.”
