Mr. Séamas de Faoite:

I thank the Chairman for his introduction and I thank the Deputies, MPs and Senators who serve on the committee for the invitation to address it today. I will be brief in my opening remarks because I believe the most beneficial part of this meeting will be the questions many members may have for the group before the committee. I know some members quite well and I have interacted with them on social media, but for others it is my first time to interact with them so it is appropriate to give them an idea of my background.

I am a 29-year-old SDLP city councillor, representing the Lisnasharragh district electoral area in Belfast, which stretches from the east bank of the River Lagan in the Belfast South parliamentary constituency to Connswater in the Belfast East parliamentary constituency. Our electoral area is politically diverse, with four different partisan traditions represented at the council, the SDLP, the Green Party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and the DUP. It is the home of Ulster Rugby, the Museum of Orange Heritage and two of the largest and fastest growing GAA clubs on the island, Bredagh and East Belfast GAA. Like some of the other councillors here this morning, I was first elected in May 2019. Following the United Kingdom's exit from the EU, I became the only directly elected representative in east Belfast who advocates a position of constitutional change. Following my election, I proposed the establishment of Belfast City Council's all-party working group on the climate crisis, serving as its first chairperson and as the chairperson of the council's Brexit committee. In 2019, Belfast City Council became the largest council in the North to back the proposed referendum on presidential voting rights for Irish citizens across the island and, potentially, across the world. I was glad to propose that motion and received support from across the council, including abstentions from the DUP, allowing it to proceed without opposition.

I was born on 5 February 1992 and on the same day Jack Duffin, William McManus, Christy Doherty, Peter Magee and James Kennedy were murdered in the Sean Graham Bookmakers massacre on Lower Ormeau Road in my home community. My grandmother was the local primary school teacher and knew some of the victims as past pupils and my mother knew them as members of the same south Belfast community that she had always called home. For as long as I can recall, the Good Friday Agreement was referenced to me and my generation as the reason that we could expect to live free from the threat of violence and free from the type of horror that occurred on 5 February 1992. That signalled a sense of hope and optimism that my parents' generation had not grown up with and a promise that an end to violence would lead to an end to division and a new and prosperous home place for all of us to share. I worry that over the past number of years the politics of Brexit, carve-up and division has undermined much of that hope among my generation. I try my best each day, as do the other elected representatives at this meeting, to try to rebuild some of that sense of hope and optimism, to work the common ground and to identify the places where we can work together on issues on which we agree, despite holding differing views on other issues.

I am keen to offer committee members the opportunity to ask as many questions as possible. I believe we are in a time of flux and change. There is a great deal to consider about the future of our home place. This is a good opportunity for representatives from across the island to get a sense of where the next generation of people's representatives see the future.