Clare Bailey

‘We have a political process instead of a peace process’

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Northern Ireland has “had a political process at the cost of a peace process”, believes Clare Bailey MLA, the leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland.  She is highly critical of the limited progress since the Good Friday Agreement 21 years ago and the lack of real social integration.  She was speaking in the latest Forward Together podcast. Clare questions who has benefited since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.  “Certainly within the working class and the most …

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Clare Bailey announced as new leader of Green Party NI

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Clare Bailey is the new leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland . She takes over from Steven Agnew who announced at the end of July that he was standing down from the party’s leadership after seven years. The south Belfast MLA was chosen as leader after her nomination was unopposed.

Clare Bailey to step down as Deputy Leader of the Green Party

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South Belfast MLA, Clare Bailey is to step down as Deputy Leader of the Green Party. Clare has been deputy leader since November 2014 and will remain an MLA within the party. Speaking about her decision she said; “I have been given and gained so much as Green Party deputy leader across the past three years. “The time is right for me to step aside and allow another person to develop the role of deputy leader. “It’s also right that …

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Explaining politics to a (nearly) five year old

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It will be a good 12 years before my eldest child can vote, but already she, along with her younger sister, has come with me to the polling booth on two occasions. The third is looming large on the horizon. Quite possibly, it is only the children who get a day off due to their school transforming into a polling station who will benefit the most from this election. I certainly don’t see any benefit to it and am getting …

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Green Party NI conference – tackling waste that holds back Northern Ireland

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Over the last four or five years that I’ve been covering Green Party conferences, the number of exhibitors, the number of delegates and the confidence of the delegates has been increasing. There were a lot of new faces this year, many but not all of them young. As Green Party activists south of the border nervously awaited results from the Irish General Election, the conference agenda in the Clayton Hotel in Belfast included encouraging video messages from the Green Party …

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Green Party Conference: growth, contrition, ambition & creating a surge in NI … for the common good

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Membership of the Green Party in NI has doubled in the last six months and there was an increase in attendance at todays party conference in the centre of Belfast. In his conference speech, leader Steven Agnew welcomed new members and explained his priorities in the NI Assembly. For eight years there has been a campaign to see joined-up government in relation to children’s services. Too many failures have been made; too many opportunities wasted; and the lives of too …

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Platform for Change panel of politicians fails to inspire about how to overcome political inertia

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Platform for Change’s latest – and perhaps last – panel event was hosted last night by Mark Carruthers in the Crescent Arts Centre. Around 40 people attended the session with its bizarrely worded title: Political Inertia to a Flourishing Society – How? The six panellists from centre-ground parties made four minute opening statements before the discussion was opened to the floor. Alasdair McDonnell (SDLP leader, MP & MLA) had come straight to the venue from the airport. He said there …

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