Congress calls on Political parties to reach agreement for the restoration of devolution
6 Oct 2006
Trade unions representing over 215,000 workers across the public and private sectors in Northern Ireland are calling upon our political representatives to strive for agreement in Scotland next week and pave the path for the restoration of devolved powers to the Assembly and Executive.
Peter Bunting, Assistant General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said:
"We in the trade union movement sincerely believe that the people that we have democratically elected are individually and collectively capable of addressing the challenges of government. We contend that the wish of the people of Northern Ireland is to be governed fairly by politicians who are accountable to the electorate which they serve. The future shape of the economy and our society is currently being decided by direct rule ministers and the turbulence of our globalised environment. It is right and proper that we too have our say in our present and our future.
"In the coming months, there will be issues that we believe would be best addressed by locally accountable politicians, such as the ongoing Review of Public Administration, the funding snarl in our schools and the operations of the Strategic Investment Board. What all three of those developments have in common is that they are hugely expensive, have permanent consequences and are utterly unaccountable to the people.
"We have already felt the impact of decisions made by the quangocratic apparatus of direct rule without the 'inconvenience' of local input, notably Water Charges and jobs lost or under threat. Then there is the wider concern of the effect on public confidence in politics itself. Perhaps the parties should reflect on the devolved Scotland beyond Fairmont St Andrew's Hotel. Devolution has been an outstanding success for our Welsh and Scottish friends and cousins. Why not us?
For a century and a half, trade unions in Britain and Ireland have been at the forefront of campaigns for democracy. We have consistently held the view that democracy is good because it embraces, rather than excludes, because your vote is worth as much as mine, and because we can disagree without dying.
This view of political life is shared by the vast majority of Northern Irish people who turn out regularly to participate in democratic elections. It is time for those votes and that viewpoint to be respected by the people we have trusted with our ballots."
ENDS