Kirsty King

On Thursday, the people of Northern Ireland will head to the polls to vote in the first Local Council Elections since 2019. Four hundred and sixty-two seats are being contested across 11 councils in the province, by a grand total of 807 candidates. With 40 percent of the population here now under 30 years old, a sizeable number of candidates running this year are part of the post-Good Friday Agreement generation. With no recollection of the violence which pre-dated the 1998 peace deal, The Scoop asked under 25s across the north why they wanted their names to be printed on the ballot paper this week.

In Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, 23-year-old Jessica Johnston is the Lagan River DEA candidate for the Alliance Party. Notably, she is the only woman running in this DEA, and is standing “to encourage more young women into politics”. In the upcoming election a total of 32 per cent of candidates running across Northern Ireland are women, a 4.5 per cent increase on 2019.

Jessica has been a member of Alliance since she was 17, and is committed to seeing more youth representation at local government level across Northern Ireland. Twenty-year-old SDLP candidate for Slieve Croob in South Down, Will Polland, holds the same sentiment. He wants to bring young voices into local politics in order to “provide a fresh perspective to local issues and deliver for everyone in their community”. He hopes to ensure that the north is “a place people want to be, and are able to stay to build their lives” and believes that the current tendency for “stop-start politics” here, along with a lack of employment opportunities is “driving young people away from our shores”. In 2019, The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee found that approximately two thirds of local students who study at universities in Great Britain do not return, in a phenomenon commonly known as the ‘brain drain’.

In the hopes that more young people will choose to stay here, candidates are passionate about improving their local communities. The youngest candidate in Fermanagh, the DUP’s Aaron Elliott, 23, wants to promote his DEA of Erne West as “a place to work and live, as well as a place of huge tourism potential” and wishes to “prioritise services to support families such as the roll out of the Council’s Play Park strategy and additional support for childcare”. Furthermore, The SDLP’s candidate for Ormiston in East Belfast, 21-year-old Lorcan McGuirk’s “major concerns” deal with “safety in the surrounding area, including promoting safer driving and dealing with anti-social behaviour”. One of the youngest candidates running in this year’s election is Alliance candidate for Slieve Gullion in South Armagh, 18-year-old Caolan Gregory, who wishes to ensure “disability access across Newry Mourne & Down, and ensuring every ratepayer has their rates spent responsibly”.

The amount of investment put into communities goes hand in hand with the mental wellbeing of their inhabitants. Statistics show that one in five adults in Northern Ireland have a mental health condition at any one time. Ulster Unionist Party candidate for Omagh, 23-year-old Matthew Bell, says a priority in the incoming Council mandate for him will be “continuing the campaign to deliver an Acute Mental Health Hospital for Omagh, which has been promised for too long”. Furthermore, 20-year-old Tony McCann, the SDLP’s candidate for Bangor West, is campaigning for “enhanced services to support people struggling with mental health issues”. He continues that drug issues are a “major problem” in Bangor; which he wants to change by “helping people suffering from addiction, not neglecting or vilifying them”.

Tony will also be “fighting discrimination against refugees” if elected in Bangor, where in recent months protests have been made outside a hotel hosting asylum seekers in the city. Sinn Féin candidate for The Mournes and Masters in Law student, 23-year-old Michael Rice is passionate about “equality, human rights and social justice”; as is Davina Pulis, 24, who is running for People Before Profit in the Waterside DEA in Derry City and Strabane District Council. As a non-binary, queer artist and committed activist from the Waterside, Davina is an active member of local grassroots organisations such as Alliance for Choice Derry and Foyle Pride, and wants to hold their local council accountable for ensuring the city is a “safe, welcoming place for the LGBTQ+ community, in particular the trans community.” According to statistics, 336 homophobic and 65 transphobic hate crime offences were reported by the police in Northern Ireland in 2021/2022.

Also involved in their local Cost-of-Living Crisis Campaign, Davina will fight for those “crippled” by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and those “striking to demand better”, wishing to “advocate for a political alternative that recognises class struggle and amplifies underrepresented voices”. In a similar vein, 20-year-old Ellie Byrne, the Green Party candidate for Macedon says that coming from a working-class background, they “know all too well the issues facing many in the community from the 'Cost of Greed Crisis’”. Ellie wants to focus on making Antrim & Newtownabbey Council a “greener, cleaner and fairer borough” for people to live and work and are “confident that green policies can help combat climate breakdown in a way that can improve people's quality of life and well-being.” Northern Ireland’s first Climate bill, the Climate Change Act which was passed in March 2022, sets a target of an at least 100 per cent reduction in net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The climate emergency is also at the forefront of other young candidates’ minds; Lorcan wishes to engage with ideas to “promote greener living and public transport,” while Jessica prioritises the “development of civic and green spaces” across her borough.

For these young candidates, identity is more significant to some than it is to others. As a young unionist, Matthew hopes to be a “confident, strong and positive unionist representative committed to promoting unionism to the post-Belfast Agreement generation”. Meanwhile, Caolan decided to stand in this election due to his frustration with politicians’ “constant arguments” over the “same old green and orange politics”, rather than what he calls the “real problems” people are facing today. Davina also talks of “green and orange” politics, which they believe “perpetuates and profits off of communal divide”. In some communities in Northern Ireland sectarianism still runs rife, with around 93 per cent of children still attending schools segregated along religious lines. Will, a former Head Boy of Lagan College, Northern Ireland’s first integrated school, believes that to “break down the sectarian divide” on the island begins with “educating our young people together” and thus, “instilling in them a sense of common respect for all”.

Twenty-five years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, young leaders are already working to create the Northern Ireland of the future.

Kirsty King is Head of The Scoop and an English graduate of Queen’s University Belfast

Youth on the Ballot: Meet the Post-Agreement Generation of Candidates