STORMONT MLAS TO VOTE NEXT WEEK ON MOTION TO EXCLUDE JIM WELLS FROM ASSEMBLY CHAMBER

DUP MLA Jim Wells faces exclusion vote next week

 

ASSEMBLY members will vote next week on whether to exclude Jim Wells from Stormont over remarks he made to the Sinn Fein culture minister and her former Provo special adviser.

The DUP MLA has refused to apologise for critical comments made in the Stormont corridors to Caral Ni Chuilin and her former special adviser Mary McArdle.

The former assembly standards commissioner decided that Mr Wells had not show the women enough respect.

Unionists are likely to vote down the proposal to exclude him for a week.

Mr Wells made the comments last year over the controversial appointment of Ms McArdle.

She had been convicted for her part in the shooting in 1984 of 22-year-old Mary Travers as she left Mass at Derryvolgie Avenue, in south Belfast.

Her magistrate father Tom Travers cheated death in the IRA attack.

Former special advisor Mary McArdle

Ms McArdle was sentenced to a life term and was released under the Good Friday Agreement.

She has since left the post and been replaced by Jarlath Kearney, a former journalist who has worked as a Sinn Fein policy adviser.

In two separate heated confrontations last summer, the DUP south Down MLA made his views known face-to-face to the minister and her then adviser.

The row is now moving from the corridors and into the Assembly chamber but it unlikely to succeed.

 

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