Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00So this is your first Twelfth as the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Edwin.
00:05Well, it's no different from any other Twelfth which I've been at as a toddler.
00:09And I actually got my 25 year medal today.
00:13So I'm proud to be wearing my 25 year service medal.
00:18And what lodge are you in?
00:20LOL 152 Temperance.
00:22So it's a wee lodge with some drinking around in it.
00:26It's not a big lodge but it's a good wee team of people.
00:30What are you making of the event here today?
00:32Is it well organised?
00:33It's going well.
00:34Good fair play to the Dariaki guys who organise this.
00:38Excellent field and there's lots of people circulating in the area.
00:42Kids are out there enjoying themselves.
00:44Buying rubbish that they don't need and playing with it.
00:47But that's what kids do on a summer's day.
00:50It's a big family day out here in the Lisburn area and people are really enjoying it.
00:57Mervyn Gibson has just given a speech there about unionists.
01:00Not quite unity but cooperation between unionists.
01:03He wants some cooperation in upcoming elections and a push to get the vote out.
01:09What's the chances of cooperation do you reckon?
01:12It's the only logical way forward.
01:14We're in a situation where we should have had 10 unionist seats but we didn't because of the way things worked out.
01:23So we need to get to that position once again and we can only do that by cooperating with each other.
01:28Lagan Valley had 29,000 unionists voted and there was 18,000 when Dodd voted for the Alliance.
01:35So that seat shouldn't have been lost to the Alliance, that's just the reality.
01:39But if you have a three-way split on one side and one on the other, you're almost certain to lose out.
01:46We look at other seats around the country which came very close to being lost.
01:51That should be a wake-up call for people not to take those risks again.
01:55Is Saoirse with a different prospect from Alliance MPs we've seen before?
02:00Like Stephen Furrie, there's been some chat that this seat can go back to unionism in five years' time.
02:07That, in my opinion, wouldn't happen easily or simply.
02:12It will involve a lot of hard work to convince and encourage people once again.
02:20In my opinion, there's an issue of trust out there and that trust needs to be fixed before we can seriously go out there to maximise seats for unionism.
02:33What about the apathy? How do you shake that off? Is that part of the trust issue?
02:37I don't think so. I think the apathy is more just apathy. I think it's not just within unionist areas.
02:42I think you look at the turnouts in quite a few areas and apathy reigns.
02:48People, I think, in Northern Ireland for too many years have been voting against something.
02:59I've always preferred in politics to give people positive reasons to vote for you.
03:05Therefore, delivering things which are of benefit to the wider community, to me, is important for politicians in general.
03:13I'd encourage politicians to actually focus on delivery for a community and going back to them and saying,
03:19We got to that in the last term and there's more that we can do. I'd encourage people out that way as opposed to using Prozac fare.