Russia’s war on Ukraine and our government's failure to protect us from spiralling energy costs were at the heart of discussions at the Green Party NI conference on Saturday.
“It’s time for change,” party leader Clare Bailey told Belfast Live.
The South Belfast MLA blames the lack of investment in green and clean energy for the bills Northern Ireland people now face and called on the DUP to elect a First Minister so £300m of emergency funding can be spent.
Read more: Ship carrying coal from Russia on way to Belfast Harbour
“As people struggle to afford to feed their families and heat their homes, Stormont is sitting on £300 million of emergency funding which can’t be spent due to the collapse of the Executive,” she told members.
During her address, Ms Bailey hit out at the latest ‘farcical and damaging’ Stormont crisis saying “those who wanted Brexit and have got Brexit need to take responsibility for Brexit”.
“It’s time to put an end to manufactured crises - we want a system that can cope with the issues facing people’s lives.”
Green Party NI currently has two backbench MLAs at Stormont. Clare Bailey represents South Belfast and Rachel Woods is an MLA for North Down.
Between them they have brought three Bills before the NI Assembly this mandate - a Climate Bill, legislation on safe zones outside women’s health and abortion services and leave for domestic abuse victims.
Ms Bailey withdrew her Climate Bill after a series of changes to Edwin Poots’ Climate Bill but says she’s hopeful the latter two will pass before this term ends.
While celebrating the party’s wins on amendments to NI's new climate legislation, she also slammed Sinn Fein, the UUP and SDLP for ‘speaking out of both sides of their mouths’ and allowing methane to be split from our net-zero reduction target.
“Meeting the climate crisis requires bravery but at the eleventh hour the majority of MLAs caved to the demands of a lobby from our highest emitting sector - we believe this to be a political and moral failure,” she told the conference.
“We have less than eight years left in the global carbon budget and that gives us a two thirds chance of staying under the critical threshold of 1.5 of global warming.
“What is right is not always popular and with less then eight years left to avoid catastrophic climate change, traditional parties have decided that votes and lobbyists are more important than fully addressing the code red for humanity and atlas of human suffering that the IPCC have given us.
“It’s climate breakdown that’s the defining issue of our time.”
The party also discussed Stormont’s failure to deliver on health, poverty, justice, clean air, land and water and sex education in the past 24 years.
MLA Rachel Woods spoke about her work on the justice committee around stalking and domestic violence ahead of a panel on gendered justice. Speakers called for mandatory, standardised relationship and sex education in schools as well as an end to 'silo-ised' working at Stormont on abuse and domestic violence.
The party's deputy leader, Mal O'Hara, hit out on the Hill's record on the climate, pollution, biodiversity, health and the slow transition away from fossil fuels - now hitting households particularly hard.
Party leader Clare Bailey told us after the conference: “It’s time politicians do the job they are elected to do. People are in crisis. We’ve got a health crisis, we’ve got an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis.
“Waiting lists are continuing to grow and people are in desperate need of health care.
“What we have from our politicians is this sectarian, divided narrative that does not work.
“It’s time to do politics differently. It’s time to focus on people and put people first.”
Speaking about Ukraine, she added: “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is horrendous - never did we think we would have seen such an escalation of violence in our life times such as we are witnessing.
“This is deplorable and we have a very strong Ukrainian people here in Northern Ireland but we need to be able to support them.
“We can do things locally. We can put in place a proper strategy to welcome those men, women and children who are fleeing Ukraine in their millions.
“We can bring them to Northern Ireland and make them feel safe and we want this Tory government to let us.”
South Belfast face-off
Clare Bailey told us the news she’s now facing Edwin Poots in the fight for a South Belfast Assembly seat was “a bit of a surprise”.
The move comes hot on the heels of their very public battle over Northern Ireland’s climate legislation.
Agriculture Minister and DUP MLA Mr Poots was nominated to take Christopher Stalford’s place after his sudden death.
It followed weeks of uncertainty about where the former DUP leader would stand for election.
Ms Bailey told the Mirror: “It’s going to be interesting.
“I’m looking forward to meeting Minister Poots on hustings trail.
“I don’t what his connection to South Belfast is and it’s people or where he is with the issues facing a lot of our communities across the constituency, but it certainly solves a problem for the DUP.”
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