Margaret Ritchie has failed to attend a single meeting of an Irish parliamentary committee examining Brexit.
Since the Brexit referendum, the Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement has met 11 times. The Committee, chaired by Sinn Féin TD, Kathleen Funchion, is examining the impacts of Brexit for Ireland, North and South, and particularly our border communities. All MPs elected in the North have been encouraged to attend these meetings. Margaret Ritchie, however, has failed to attend a single meeting.
It is particularly sad that the only MPs who have never attended a single meeting of this Committee, aside from Margaret Ritchie, have been Unionist MPs.
It is not acceptable that South Down’s voice is not heard loud and clear in Dublin as Ireland’s parliament works to limit the potentially disastrous impacts for our island of a hard Tory Brexit.
For example, at the meeting on 15 December 2016, Peter Conway, the CEO of Warrenpoint Harbour gave evidence to the Committee on how important it was to minimise the impacts of Brexit for South Down’s fisheries sector. Mickey Brady, the Sinn Féin MP for Newry and Armagh, was present and said that: “Autoline, Warrenpoint Port, the Newry and Mourne Enterprise Agency, First Derivatives and Norbrook all come from local people and do not depend on the outside. It is a Newry thing that people have that get-up-and-go approach to make it a success.” But where was Warrenpoint’s own MP? Why has Ms Ritchie never attended?
Margaret Ritchie’s repeated absences seriously neglect our local industries. There is no good reason why Ms Ritchie should repeatedly snub invitations to attend. While she has failed to turn up in Dublin, she has still regularly travelled to London, Ritchie’s London hotel stays, as evidenced by her published expense claims (available on IPSA’s webpages), are for varying concerning amounts and frequently as high as £450. Unlike other MPs, Ritchie’s hotel expense disclosures lack transparency as she does not declare the dates to which each expense entry relates. This frustrates proper public scrutiny of her expenditure.”
It is a sad reflection of Ms Ritchie’s record that by prioritising attendance at Westminster, she has failed to engage with elected representatives across our own island. It is here in Ireland, especially in our own border communities, that the full impact of the Tories’ Brexit agenda will be felt, not in London.
Jude, maybe, in the interests of fairness and clarity, you should offer Margaret the right of reply!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: ANYBODY is welcome to offer a blog on this site, assuming they can write, don’t engage in libel and aren’t indulging in mindless abuse. I think M R and everyone else should know this by now. But if anyone wants to contact Margaret R directly and offer her, in my name, the ‘right of reply’, I’ll be happy to open up a space for her should she feel inclined. (Incidentally, this ‘right of reply’ appears to work only occasionally. For example, I’ve been the subject of attack in the Belfast Telegraph by RDE and Eilis O’Hanlon, to mention just two, and I don’t recall anyone offering me right of reply. Odd.)
Don’t think I would ever judge you by the ‘standards’ of Denis O’Brien’s BelTel!
This is an excellent piece which shows SDLP double standards, especially in South Down. Most Nationalists and Republicans will have long known the careful course the SDLP in South Down steer to avoid alienating their “core Unionist vote”, all the same few will have realised this even extends to snubbing a Dail that so many people fought so hard to establish.
They were on about giving their votes to uup maybe they should join them old saying cant see the wood for the trees use to vote sdlp my god so sad