Belfast City Hall

[gentle music] In CI News this week, the Northern Ireland Assembly votes to push forward with plans for a new conversion therapy law.

The prime minister rejects the idea of decriminalizing harmful drugs, and a plan to illuminate Belfast City Hall in celebration of abortion is halted.

[gentle music] Hello, and welcome to CI News on the 2nd of October.

I'm Joanna Tim.

Right to Life UK's Chief Executive, Alistair Hungerford Morgan, said it is extraordinary for the board to claim that the system is safe.

Victoria's Health Minister must commission an urgent wider review of the assisted suicide system, including how lethal drugs are stored and returned, and whether claimed safeguards in current legislation protect people in practice.

And finally, plans to illuminate Belfast City Hall in celebration of abortion have been halted following a backlash.

The council decided to seek legal advice after the DUP used a call-in procedure to object to the building being lit up for International Safe Abortion Day on the 28th of September.

or a new flag or how are we going to integrate health or how are we going to integrate our policing or how are we going to integrate our courts or how are we going to navigate tax? How are we going to get the health system going? All of these are questions that I think are right for us to do because as we saw with Brexit, when you haven't figured out the nitty gritty, you end up with some half-baked thing that nobody understands what it's going to be.

And in talking about the flag, like back in 2012, 2013, the loyalists had serious protests in relation to flags coming down from Belfast City Hall.

And so their flag is really important to them.

So there's a level of sensitivity that will need to go with this.

If you've not seen it, I can't explain.

Clinton ended up actually becoming quite involved in the ceasefire agreements and broader peace process, even hosting a rally outside Belfast City Hall in 1995.

And yet, Clinton's peacemaking ultimately came after years of a lot of monetary support flowing from Irish-American communities in the US to the IRA during the Troubles.

And, in fact, Irish unification remains pretty popular amongst Irish-Americans, with a poll in 2023 finding support for peaceful Irish reunification to be the single biggest issue which Irish-Americans wanted US politicians to address in relation to Ireland.

Um, tell us, what is the event that's coming up?

Well, for just about a backstory for your viewers that, uh, or listeners that may be m- unaware of it, uh, Belfast City Hall, the council has decided that they are going to light, illuminate up Belfast City Hall on the Monday the 28th of September.

They're gonna illuminate, uh, City Hall up, uh, to celebrate, s- well, celebrate, uh, International Safe Abortion Day.

Now, if...

They use the word safe and abortion together.

So, uh, that's planned to happen on Monday the 28th of September.

Now, Bernie Smyth from Precious Life, great friend of yours and mine, uh, organized an event, uh, last weekend down at Belfast City Hall, where about 250 to 300 of us from all different groups across the north of Ireland and southern Ireland joined together with, uh, being led by Father Antonio, where we prayed the rosary, uh, and prayers outside Belfast City Hall.

We brought flags of the Saints of Ireland and a statue of Our Lady.