I urge upon the Minister, and the vision group that she has set up, the need to keep young people on the farms. To do that, those who have given their lives to farming should be adequately provided for in relation to the rainy and stormy day that has indeed come to them.

The second addition is the commitment to introduce — and I know that this lies near to the heart of Mr McGrady, who spoke immediately before me — the decommissioning scheme for fishing vessels.

There is a serious crisis in agriculture, and we pray God that it will not continue and spread as it has done in the rest of the United Kingdom, but we should also recognise the serious plight of our fishing fleet. It is as near to catastrophe as it can be. It is in grave danger of being wrecked on the rocks for ever. That is not my language; it is the language across the board of all who know anything about the fishing industry.

We entered the Common Market, as it was then called, with the highest strength that any Government or nation ever entered the Common Market. We controlled 75% of all the fishing waters around Europe. We do not control any of them today. We do not even have part of a dam that we can sail across and say belongs to us.

Our fishermen have been shut out of fishing waters and have therefore had to change their employment. They now fish for prawns instead of white fish. We are told that that will save the industry, but when our fishermen fish for prawns they scoop up the juvenile white fish, which are thrown back into the waters, dead. The very programme that was supposed to save fishing is destroying it. We have a plight and I do not see any attempt to remedy it. The fishing community is in a very sad state today.

We need to make it known that, under the decommissioning scheme, a person who has kept his boat up to standard and received grants for doing so will have to pay back every grant that he has ever received. When he pays that back, he will have nothing. Therefore, we should not say that there should be a decommissioning scheme. Those are not my words; they are the words spoken by two organisations that represent the whole fishing industry when they addressed the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee on Friday.

I note that Mr McGrady is nodding his head in agreement. He knows this story better than anyone else in this House. We are in a very serious position and we need to face up to it. There is no use telling people that we have sympathy for them — we have to be practical. There is a simple remedy that could start now. That remedy is a tie-up scheme whereby boats that cannot fish now are tied up for a season and the fishermen are paid full wages so that they can keep their trained sailors or fishermen and start again when the season changes.

That seems to be the right thing to do. The European Union has a scheme — all the work is done — so why do we not have that scheme? The Scots have greater clout with the UK Government in political matters than we have, and they are now calling for the same scheme. Our only hope is that we can get in on that scheme on their skirts. If we do not, it will be curtains for the fishing community.

There is nothing else that those men can do. They cannot quit and get a job where they are. All that they will be offered in Kilkeel is breaking stones. Many of them are now doing that. They are convicts in the sad arena of their unemployment through no fault of their own. Those are matters to which we need to attend.

I want to take off my hat as Chairperson of the Committee and make some other comments. No country can achieve reasonable stability until its people trust that stability can be achieved.

I am not like the leader of the Alliance Party — I have a mandate from the people. I have submitted myself repeatedly to the electorate. The House must recognise, whether it likes it or not, that the majority of the Unionist population are very unhappy — and that is a very mild term — about what is happening in our country. They do not have faith in what is going on.

There was an argument here today between Mr McCartney and Mr Mallon about what they had said. I keep abreast of what people say — any politician who does not have a good filing cabinet of what his opponents say is not fit to be a politician. The Deputy First Minister is recorded in ‘The Irish Times’ of 16 November 1998 as having said that

I find that strange, having heard today’s exchange. Unionists in Northern Ireland are not fools. They have been described as bigots and worse, but the majority of Unionists understand what is happening in this country. The First Minister made a very pleasing statement today —[Interruption]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are discussing the Programme for Government. The Member is discussing matters far removed from that. Should he not be brought to order and told to discuss the Programme for Government?

I am sure that Dr Paisley will come to the main burden of his speech immediately.

It is strange that the learned Gentleman should take me to task for what I am saying, when I am commenting on a speech that was made by the First Minister. He must not have heard the First Minister’s speech, and there are many —[Interruption]

I raise again my point of order.

Dr Paisley should move to the Programme for Government.

I am talking about the Programme for Government. I am doing so in a way that it goes to the quick of the questioner. He is sore about it. I can assure him that he will be sorer before I finish. I am sticking to the point — I am sticking to it so well that it is sticking in the Member’s gullet. That is his trouble.

The Programme for Government should establish the basis for good government. The First Minister made a long speech today that had nothing to do with the programme for future Government, but he praised what he said he had already done. Mr Maginness did not get up off his backside to call the First Minister to order then, because it was well pleasing to him to hear such things.

I shall deal with the Programme for Government. The programme must rest on certain bases. First, it must rest on a basis of stability. Of course, the hon Gentleman believes that his allies in IRA/Sinn Féin can hold on to their weaponry and that we shall still have a good basis for stability. He believes that the RUC needs to be denuded and destroyed, and that then we shall have a good basis for stability. He believes many other things that I, and the people who sent me here, do not believe. He can make his own speech and defend what he believes.

Unless we have stability we cannot have a prosperous country in which our people can earn their livelihood, take their children to school, and live and grow up in a place where there is real peace. Northern Ireland is labelled peaceful, but is in fact in internecine war. The events of the past days surely send out a warning to what we may have in the future. We are now on the tomorrow of a bombing in London. Before the end of the week there may be many more acts of atrocity, and every one of them will lead to instability in the Province.

I have been giving you quite a lot of rope. You must realise that we are debating the Programme for Government. Please address that now.

I am setting the scene for what should be available if we are to have any government at all. If one does not have the right basis, one cannot move forward. Some people do not want to talk about those matters because they are unpleasant to them, but we had better face them. The man in the street knows that.

I shall give the House an illustration. The First Minister told us about all those things, but he missed out education completely. I wonder why. If we are going to have proper government in this country, and a role for government, we must have proper education for our children. [Interruption]

Integrated education.

Integrated education or whatever education you like — that is not my issue today.

Dr Paisley, please address your remarks through the Chair.

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wish you would direct Members not to talk from a sedentary position. They should address their comments through the Chair after rising to speak in the proper way.

I fully agree with what the Member says, and I ask Members to adhere to that.

Surely we should all agree that every section of the community should have the benefits of education, and that education should be fairly administered. It is not so in the Province. There are independent Christian schools, to which the Department of Education refuses to give one penny piece. That is a fact — and I happen to know the facts.

The Sinn Féin/IRA Minister recently announced how he was going to package the money for the good government that we are told we have. Every day I come to the House I pass Strandtown Primary School. I know that school well — three of my children and my good wife received their primary education there. The Minister speaks of good education and a role for the Government, but let us hear what Dr Desmond Hamilton, the principal of that school, had to say when he saw the money that is to be handed out to other schools but not to the state schools:

The state sector of education is no longer a Protestant sector. There is as much integration in state schools as there is in the so-called integrated schools.

The Minister is going to hand out £25·5 million to the Roman Catholic schools and £14·3 million to the integrated schools. The hon Lady has been crying here about integrated education. It represents only 4% of the children, yet it is going to get £14·3 million.

The state schools, which have mobile classrooms not fit for chickens, are going to get the miserable sum of £12·7 million, although they have 45% of the entire school population. Then we are told that this Government is a good Government. We are told that this is the Government that we should sponsor and help.

However, when we look at the figures, we also discover that the Member who has some connections in his previous offices with the city of Londonderry hands the vast amount of money to Roman Catholic schools in that city. Those are the facts. Even some of the Official Unionists were worried about those facts; even they got disturbed. Surely those are matters that have to do with government and with the good government of this country.

Where are the people who are all for fair play to others? I have not heard a squeak from the SDLP or the Women’s Coalition about that. I have not heard a squeak from anybody but those on the Unionist side of the House about this. Why? Because an attempt is being made to paint a picture that is not one of reality.

I trust that if we get good government it will be fair government that will give to each section of the community what it deserves and is entitled to have. If things had gone the other way and a Minister had got up and given that large percentage to state education and not given as much to integrated education which got more than its fair share, there would have been an uproar in the House. However, that it is not so today. The First Minister wanted to sweep that matter under the carpet so that it might all be forgotten.

No, things are not happy in this Province. The ordinary Unionist voter understands that, and I am thankful that some day at the polls — whether in April or May or after the marching season matters not — a stop will be put to surrender concessions. The Ulster people are not going to change. They have made up their minds that the time has come for those who say they should be in Government to carry responsibility. They are not fit to be in Government if they do not.

We are reaping the sad sowing of what people hailed in this House as liberation day — a day of jubilee — but this has been a day of the forging of chains, of the breaking of oaths and of dishonesty. There has already been a sad reaping, and there will be an even sadder reaping.

I wish to discuss hospitals for a moment. All Members should take a day off and visit some hospitals. If they did, they would see what the doctors, nurses, patients and the general public must cope with. They would see what distracted families must endure when they take their sick relatives to hospital for admission. They are sent away, because operations cannot be done. Some people have been sent away three times. How do they feel? Some have gone through the motions of preparing for an operation three times. On each occasion a doctor suddenly appeared and told them that the operation could not be done and that they would be called again. That has been repeated again and again.

Members should sit in waiting rooms and listen to the general public’s complaints. We should listen to what the doctors say. We should speak to those hard worked nurses and attendants. Then we would realise that all is not well in the hospital system and Health Service. When doctors and specialists tell us that they leave Northern Ireland, it is time for us to abandon the programme that we think is going to save our Health Service and adopt one that really can.

We live in days in which we have large problems. Those problems will not go away unless there is dedication, hard work and a plan that at least has some hope of success. To keep pursuing a plan that has not produced the goods is folly. At the very least we must have a plan that gives us some hope at the end of a hard, rocky and mountainous road.

The First Minister was very hard on my son today when he asked questions. I have the Civic Forum’s report. It is an elaborate book printed on the finest art paper, which must have cost thousands of pounds to produce. I have not seen printing like it before.

The Assembly — the elected body — cannot print its reports on solid art paper. However, the Civic Forum can. It was not dealing with a Programme for Government; it was dealing only with a response to a draft programme, and yet it requires all this expense.

At the end of the report — and I am sure the Women’s Coalition will welcome it — the Civic Forum includes many lovely pages on which to make notes. Therefore, one only gets the content, but pages for your notes — all on the finest art paper. Yet the First Minister complains when a Member of the House asks questions.

I thank the Member for his point about the notes at the back of the report being handy for the Women’s Coalition. We appreciate the opportunity to write, learn and tell as much as we can.

Is the Civic Forum document not proof of the valuable work that that body is doing, in that the amount of detail it went into helped our deliberations on the Programme for Government?

I have never listened to such rubbish. I was not talking about the report’s contents; I was talking about the printer’s work. Does the Forum’s report have to be printed on the finest art paper?

I wonder whether the Member, if she is a candidate at the next election, will tell of the day she fought a lonely battle for art paper for the report of the Civic Forum.

We are getting a little far away from the Programme for Government.

You allowed her to do it.

Dr Paisley, we have only until 6.00 pm this evening, which is another 25 minutes or so. Will you — I am not by any means saying that you must stop — bring your remarks to a close fairly soon and allow at least one other person to speak.

I asked earlier what the time limit was for speaking and was told that there was no limit. Therefore, I can do what we do in the British House of Commons in a similar debate. We travel from Beer-sheba to Dan and from Dan to Beer-sheba, and I intend to do that. I intend to make my remarks on this Government. After all, this Government should be prepared to stand up to scrutiny.

Surely we should be allowed to debate and discuss this wonderful blueprint for future blessings on a land flowing with milk and honey. Why do you, Mr Deputy Speaker, want to stop me? You once stopped me when you wore a certain uniform — you stopped me dead in my tracks. However, I am not going to be stopped tonight; I am going to go on. I digressed to give Ms Morrice an opportunity to defend fine art paper for the report of the Forum, but that is past and gone.

I referred to its contents.

I can assure the Member that there is no art in its contents. She should read it. She must have a poor view of art. I may not have a very high view of art, but I have some view of it, for my daughter is an artist, as the Member well knows. I say to the Member that I see no art in this document — [Interruption].

I am going to go on, and I am not going to be distracted by the Women’s Coalition. I have given that party enough publicity, and I want to go on.

So long as you go on, Dr Paisley, on the Programme for Government.

Which page is the Member on?

I am on pages 1 to 205. I do not know what stupidity this House can have in its membership when it actually asks me what page I am on — I have not even completed my introduction. I have no intention of saying, "Finally, brethren". The people who sit here are not my brethren, so I could not address them as such.

I was referring to the fact that you did once stop me in my tracks, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I got going again, and I am going to get going again now on this matter.

Mr McGrady said that we have one shortage, which is money, and he was absolutely right. Those things cannot be retrieved without finance. Unfortunately for us, those people who negotiated with Europe were never able to entend to us the benefits that came from Europe to the other part of this island, which got £5 million every day from European coffers. That, of course, has ceased. Anybody could work a good economy if they had £5 million put into their pocket every day. If we had had £5 million put into our pocket every day, and if that money had been well spent and invested, Ulster would be a different place to live in today.

We have to look at where we can get the money. First, charity begins at home, so there could be a pruning of over-government in Northern Ireland. There is far too much government in Northern Ireland. For instance, there are 10 Departments in the Assembly, and we need only five. We have a superabundance of Ministers, and yet when there is an agricultural crisis not one can be spared to deputise for the Minister of Agriculture when she is away.

I do not know why another Minister cannot stand in for an absent Colleague, as is done in other places. Here, Ministers cannot even cover for a Colleague who has to attend to something of vital importance. I am not criticising the Agriculture Minister for wanting to go to a meeting with the Prime Minister about the crisis; I am sure that she needed to go. However, there was no reason why Mr Nesbitt who is, I understand, a very capable man — he thinks he is, anyway, and he seems quite happy with my eulogy — could not have made a statement. Mr Nesbitt and Mr Haughey serve in the Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, so why could one of them not have made a statement on agriculture? After all, they have very little to do; they do not have a portfolio.

Northern Ireland is over-governed and the time has come when the Executive need to cut out the nonsense of printing reports on art paper and reduce the amount of money that is spent. Today, I learned that the Assembly is going to enlarge its camp. It is going to lengthen its cords and strengthen its stakes. Another property will be taken over because, it is said, the Assembly does not have enough room. Where will it end?

Northern Ireland needs money. There are untapped benefits in Europe, including agrimoney that we should have had long ago. The money was not drawn down from Europe, because the Government were so ham-fisted. However, because of the foot-and-mouth plague, the Government are going to draw it down now. There are opportunities to get large sums of money from Europe that could be used in the agriculture industry if the United Kingdom Government were prepared to bring in match funding.

I met a group of men today from the abattoir and meat-processing industries. Their plants are closed down; their rate bill is £500 per day. They do not want to sack every member of staff, because, if they do so, they will put families in jeopardy. If they reopen, their whole business would be in jeopardy.

There is an opportunity to get money in Europe to help such people to stay in business until they are able to do business. Where is the compensation that we hear talked about? Others have lost out and others still will lose out. If the machinery of agriculture — Northern Ireland’s largest industry — is destroyed, how will the story end? The Assembly should demand that the Government show the will to ensure that the industry is not destroyed. That responsibility rests with those in the Departments who know the story and know how much money is needed.

I agree with Mr McGrady. It is vital that the necessary money be made available to keep the industry ticking over. We hope that the industry will get back into gear, although we cannot be sure that it will. The fishing industry has the same requirements. Every possible European subsidy should be investigated. Northern Ireland deserves to have them, and they should be exploited to the hilt.

Matters such as planning concern all of us. I do not know how other Members feel but I felt very sore when I walked up a farm laneway with a man who had borne the burden and heat of the day in the farming life of our Province and he told me that he was not allowed to build a house for his daughter on any part of his land. His wife had doctors’ certificates that stated that she needed her daughter to live beside her, but still they were turned down. I could spend hours bringing records to the House to show that that scenario is repeated over and over again.

That was on land near Slemish, and the planner had the cheek to tell me that there was no room for gates on the property, so a house could not be built there. I asked him where it stated in his remit that a house had to have a gate and a wall on which to hang a gate. There was a tree beside the opening and I said that the owner would attach a gate to the tree. The planner said that he would not accept that. However, he was eventually overruled and the man was able to build a house for his daughter who needed to be near her mother.

I disagree with planning like that. The people who live on the land should have the gains of the land. Planning must be in proportion to need. Where there is need in a rural district, a farmer should be entitled to planning permission. He should also be allowed to develop his land. I attended a planning appeal at which a man was told that he could build five houses on his property but that he would not get planning permission if he intended to put them up for sale. I said that it was his land and asked why, since he was in difficulty, he could not build houses and sell them. The Housing Executive then came along and built 25 houses one field away.

Is the Member talking about Kircubbin?

No. It was in north Antrim: dear, lovely north Antrim, far better than County Down.

That man was prohibited from building. It would have given him something for his retirement, a house for a member of his family, and he could have sold the rest. However, the Housing Executive came along and built 25 houses one field away. There is something wrong with the planning laws. I am not in favour of building houses where they ought not to be, but many houses are built in such places. Before I became a Member of Parliament I was not bothered about that, but now when I drive along the road I look at every house and I wonder how some people ever got planning permission. Members would be amazed where permissions have been granted. We produced a report that said that that matter needs to be addressed and that there must be a realistic view of planning.

If the farmers are in difficulty and if, all things being equal, they can build property and sell it, they should be encouraged to do that and get some money back from their heritage. Who could refuse that particular proposition?

Then, of course, roads need a great injection of cash — even the roads in beautiful south Down. I used to spend my holidays there, in a place called Killowen. It is a lovely place, and I go along that way whenever I am in the area, just for old times sake. However, the roads have deteriorated. If roads are not maintained they reach a state where they need a very large injection of money. There is no way that one can build a road, say that it will do, and then use it continuously. When the time comes to upgrade it there is a tremendous amount of work to do. Rural roads need to be attended to, and attended to speedily. We must have an infrastructure that is safe and that is continually being improved. That is another part of the trouble with which we need to concern ourselves.

That might bring me to page 67 of the document, but I am glad that I made a moving speech, and that I talked my opposition away. I always like to make a moving speech and get people away who will not listen to sense.

What about this whole programme? What about the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety? What about social services? Mr McGrady talked about the elderly. We need to think about the elderly. I visited a home, and the lady who lives there said to me, "I have lost my home help, I do not have her any more." What did the home help do? She lit a fire, made a cup of tea and enquired about the lady’s health. That was all the home help did, but she was the anchor of that elderly woman’s life, and now that anchor has been removed. When I meet and talk to old people they tell me about the terrible events that are happening — burglaries, old people being raped and other tragedies. Some of them live in desperate, terrible fear.

I have been a minister of religion for more than 54 years. I have visited thousands of homes. I know what I am talking about. The elderly deserve our best, but they are not getting it. We have a responsibility towards them.

I could go on and talk about many matters that are crying out for help, but we come back to the fact that unless we create stability, unless we create trust, unless our families can be educated in peace, unless we can get rid of those who harbour arms and use them, unless we get rid of those who cause explosions and maim and kill and destroy society we shall not be able to. We have a colossal task. Sometimes we shall despair. However, we must remember that it is not to despair that we are called into this world; it is to triumph. We can do the job if we are prepared to pay the price. I hope that this Province of ours has people who are prepared to pay that price so that we can get the job done for the better future of us all.

Thank you, Dr Paisley. We have listened with great attention to your quite lengthy discourse. Unless there is Member who is prepared to speak for five minutes only, we should adjourn until tomorrow.

I wholly defend Dr Paisley in the time he took to make that fine speech, which covered many topics. Shall I, as the Chairperson of the Health, Social Services and Public Safety Committee, and other Members be allowed a similar length of time tomorrow?

We shall spend tomorrow morning debating the Programme for Government. We must wait and see how much ground we can cover in that time. Undoubtedly, you will be called to speak tomorrow. However, the next person on my list is Mr Maskey. I hope to see all of you tomorrow after prayers.

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