Ms Áine Groogan:

I thank the committee for this opportunity. I probably will not get to cover everything I want in the opening statement, but I will do my best. I am a Green Party councillor for the Botanic district electoral area in south Belfast. I am the first Green Party councillor to represent that area. It is a diverse constituency. I represent a number of inner-city working-class Protestant unionist loyalist communities, as well as a predominately nationalist or republican community. We also have the Holyland student area and some more affluent areas. My constituency also has a significant number of newcomer and black and minority ethnic, BAME, communities. All of this makes us one of the most diverse communities in Northern Ireland.

I will be honest. Issues such as Brexit or the constitutional question do not feature in my day-to-day life. They did not feature in my election campaign. I was not asked about them on the doors. What people do speak to me about is a lack of trust in politicians here; the lack of housing for their families; feeling pushed out of their city; the cruel and inhumane benefit system; or why in 2021 we are still putting women and pregnant people on a boat in the middle of a pandemic.

As a Green Party member, our position on the Good Friday Agreement is clear. We support the Agreement and its full implementation. It was, and is, the people’s Agreement. However, what we have seen since 1998 is the altering of its provisions by politicians and for politicians, through the various other agreements that have been made as we have lunged from one political crisis to another. That has been done without the consent of the people who agreed the Good Friday Agreement in the first place. That has so often failed to be acknowledged. I am not saying that we do not need to update the Agreement, but I do not believe it should be done as a result of closed conversations in back rooms by a small number of political elites. As a party, we do not designate as either nationalist or unionist. We are "othered". We have seen the rise of the "other" in Northern Ireland for some time now yet, in the Assembly, our votes still count for less. As the rhetoric ramps up, post Brexit, so do the calls to pick a side, as if the only two possible identities in this place are nationalist or unionist. I take great offence at my identity not being considered valid, as it does not fit the neat binaries that have been entrenched in our political institutions. It may suit certain parties to continue peddling the myth that there’s simply "them’uns" and "us’uns", as it keeps them in a job, but I can sit here with confidence and say that I am not a unionist, nor am I a nationalist.

I am a feminist and an eco-socialist. That is my political identity. That is what is relevant to me and I believe a growing number of other people in Northern Ireland. We have a right for that to be respected, just as those who choose their political identity to be nationalist, unionist, or something else entirely. It is not "sitting on the fence", as I have been told. The constitutional future of Northern Ireland will be dictated by the people and the people alone, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement, and not by political parties.

We are still fumbling our way through an unprecedented global pandemic. Who knows what impact that is going to have on us going forward? Brexit is, and will continue to be, one of the most complex socio-political and economic shocks that we are going to have to try and make sense of. Our world is burning. We all know John Hume’s famous line: "You can’t eat a flag". Well, I am going to quote my esteemed colleague, Councillor Brian Smith: "If you don’t deal with climate breakdown now, you’ll be arguing about a United Ireland in a canoe in a few years." Climate does not recognise borders. The issues facing the people in my constituency know no borders. Working-class people in Belfast, Derry, Dublin, London, Newcastle, Glasgow, and Cardiff all the have same issues. That is what I want to focus on as a political representative. I will leave it at that and I am happy to take any questions.