Dylan Quinn has called on the Irish and British governments to do more to break the political deadlock at Stormont taking aim at the lack of pressure being put on local parties by either government.

Speaking at the #WeDeserveBetter protest held in Enniskillen on Tuesday, to a crowd of over 1,000 people, Dylan made an impassioned demand to all involved to get back to work for the people of Northern Ireland.

“We know that it will not be easy and that is why we have requested that the UK and Irish governments do their job to support the process and work with parties to solve the issues they have whilst at the same time getting them back into government so the outstanding issues of governance can be sorted so that we can begin to look to the future,” he said. Dylan went on to detail issues and matters that cannot be dealt with due to “dormant Stormont”.

“It is estimated that £9million of taxpayer’s money, our money, has gone into the pockets of MLAs over the last 589 days. And they even got a pay rise during that time. Dormant Stormont is preventing progress. This situation would not be accepted by any community in any other part of these islands.”

The potential “catastrophic consequences” for the healthcare system, the infrastructure work on hold, the lack of progress addressing important social issues such as homelessness and LGBTQ and women’s’ rights, cuts to Arts funding and the lack of pay increases for public sector workers and the fragility of matters surrounding peace and reconciliation were also highlighted in his speech.

“Because Stormont has been dormant our children are going into their third school year in a country that has no functioning government. Our future generations deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this.”

Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Karen Bradley and the Irish government were next on the agenda for Dylan. “Let me add how disappointed we are that our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland seems to be doing so little to help the situation. She has the powers to reduce the salary, she has not. Karen Bradley, we deserve better than what you are delivering on our behalf. And we also ask the Irish government a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, to also seriously consider what it is you are doing to help the people of NI in this time of need.

“We know politics is not easy. We don’t have all the answers. Indeed it is not our job to have all the answers but one thing we do know is we deserve better than what they are currently giving us and what the current political leadership is giving us.”

Dylan says there can be no more “business as usual”.

“We want inclusive politics. We want politics for all the people of Northern Ireland, a politics that crosses the traditional party divide, so all concerns are heard. Politics is about resolving problems not creating them. A politics of the future and not of the past. And if they cannot or will not do this we demand that MLAs receive a significant pay cut.”