{"id":242372,"date":"2025-11-04T01:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/242372\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T01:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:08:10","slug":"belfast-council-vote-no-confidence-in-education-minister-after-walking-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/242372\/","title":{"rendered":"Belfast: Council vote no confidence in education minister after walking out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With 22 representatives in the 60-member council, Sinn F\u00e9in is the largest party at City Hall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following the initial walk out, it took almost an hour to persuade all the councillors to return to the chamber.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">During bizarre scenes, some of the Sinn F\u00e9in councillors suddenly resumed their seats during a vote on whether to pause proceedings for a short adjournment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The DUP opposed the break but, with the help of the returning Sinn F\u00e9in councillors, the proposal was passed by 19 votes to 15<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Twenty minutes later, after talks behind the scenes, the meeting resumed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice) councillor Ron McDowell accused Sinn F\u00e9in of trying to &#8220;hijack&#8221; the meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;The Lord Mayor was absolutely right to intervene to prevent the chamber being misused in this way and to ensure council business continued in line with proper procedure and established democratic practice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The people of Belfast expect their council to deal with the business before it \u2014 not to become a stage for last-minute political ambushes and point-scoring.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 22 representatives in the 60-member council, Sinn F\u00e9in is the largest party at City Hall. Following the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-242372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}