‘Grave concern for public services with no Stormont deal’ – McNulty | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

‘Grave concern for public services with no Stormont deal’ – McNulty

SDLP Assembly Member for Newry and Armagh Justin McNulty MLA has expressed his deep concern at the impact on essential public services should there be no deal to restore the Assembly in the coming weeks.

McNulty made the comments as Secretary of State James Brokenshire set the latest deadline for a deal to be struck between the DUP and Sinn Fein.

 

 

Speaking to Newry Times, McNulty explained, “Public services are at breaking point and people are at their wits end with the constant cut after cut in essential services that are impacting their and their children’s lives.

“Our health service is crumbling before our eyes, school leaders are faced with losing teaching and nonteaching staff and roads here resemble the surface of the moon with no money left to carry out repairs. If you didn’t live here, you would think we were in some sort of sitcom from the 1980’s.

“Stormont can and must be made to work. We have seen the DUP and Sinn Fein work together for the last ten years and whilst their relationship at times has been abysmal, they got on with government.

 

 

“Now their two leaders don’t even have to look at each other sideways and there is a political hiatus. Meanwhile the ordinary members of the public are left in limbo with cancelled cancer operations, school resources being slashed and rural roads becoming a nightmare,” he insisted.

“While crises engulf our health services and our schools, the DUP and Sinn Féin have talked for month after month and have only delivered failure. People are genuinely fed up, they want their political leaders to lead, to come to a compromise and to get on with government. I genuinely fear for the worse if the two biggest parties fail to come to an agreement.

“In particular for the nationalist community, after years of trying to bring power back to Irish soil in order that local people could make local decisions, it should be a source of great anger that all of that power and progress is now being handed back to a Tory/DUP government in London.

 

 

McNulty added, “This Tory Government and its slash and burn ideology is bad for everyone in this society, no matter who you are, where you’re from or what your religious background is. Stormont must be made work and its time Arlene and Michelle listened to the very real anger within our communities.”

Short URL: https://newrytimes.com/?p=62024

Posted by on Oct 25 2017. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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