Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

There is a limiting mechanism already, which is twofold. First, for a motion to be tabled in the first place, the Minister would not have to have annoyed one person, or a small group of people; the Minister would have had to have taken decisions or acted in such a way that he or she had annoyed at least 30 people. For that motion to be pursued, the Minister would have had to have lost the confidence of the 30 people who had signed the motion, and cross-community support from throughout the Assembly. That Minister would have had to have annoyed people from the Unionist side and the nationalist side of the Assembly. I cannot see anything more limiting than that, and in those circumstances it is unlikely that there would be a host of motions for frivolous reasons, such as the Minister making a wrong decision about how money should be spent or about who should be appointed. There would have to be more serious grounds than that.