Education minister criticised for meeting loyalist group

Education Minister Paul Givan has been criticised for meeting "an unrepresentative group, an unelected group" of loyalists.

Sinn Féin assembly member Pat Sheehan made the comments during a meeting of Stormont's education committee.

But the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) assembly member David Brooks responded by saying that "if we're expected to sit with republicans and listen to republicans, then we're going to listen to loyalists too."

The DUP's Mr Givan met the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), which includes representatives from paramilitary groups the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), on 24 September.

At the meeting, the LCC said a "proposal to build an Irish language school in the mainly unionist area of east Belfast should be stopped".

The integrated Irish-medium school Scoil na Seolta is set to be housed on a temporary site on Montgomery Road in the Castlereagh area of Belfast.

The minister's meeting with the LCC prompted exchanges between Mr Sheehan, who is vice-chair,man of the Education Committee, and Mr Brooks at the start of the committee meeting on Wednesday.

Mr Sheehan mentioned Mr Givan's meeting with the LCC.

"Rightly, concerns and criticisms were raised around that meeting," Mr Sheehan said.

"A number of other groups and individuals who are involved in the education sector, or where it's cross-cutting with health, have requested meetings going back as far as February and haven't been given that facility," he continued.

Mr Sheehan referred to a previous session in the Stormont chamber on 30 September where he had been accused of "hypocrisy" by the DUP's Jonathan Buckley for being critical of Mr Givan's meeting with the LCC.

Mr Buckley had said Sinn Féin should "take the plank from its own eye before it casts aspersions on members who are committed to the rule of law".

"The fact is, we put ourselves in front of the electorate and we get a mandate from the electorate," Mr Sheehan told members of the education committee.

"The people who were meeting the minister are unelected and probably, in some cases, unelectable so there's a qualitative difference there."

At the meeting between Mr Givan and the LCC, educational underachievement in loyalist areas was also discussed.

"Where he's talking about elements of criminality and involvement in drugs, anyone who's involved in that activity I have no defence to make for them," Mr Brooks said.

"I hope the law deals with them as it should."

"The LCC in my understanding is a body that is about helping those who want to transition within loyalism away from criminality to do that and on that basis I'm happy to engage with them."

Mr Sheehan said the Irish-language body Foras na Gaeilge had been asking for a meeting with Mr Givan since February and had not been able to get one.

He also said that the Independent Autism reviewer for Northern Ireland, Ema Cubitt, had also failed to get a meeting with Mr Givan so far.

The committee chairman, Alliance's Nick Mathison, said committee had requested more information from Mr Givan about his meeting with the LCC.