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Belfast Live
Belfast Live
National
Brendan Hughes

SDLP, TUV and Green Party leaders to address their annual conferences

The leaders of the SDLP, TUV and Green Party are set to address their annual conferences.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood is expected to say "division, deadlock and intransigence" at Stormont are eroding faith in the value of public service.

In his speech, Mr Eastwood will say it is "time to get back to work" after a year of the power-sharing institutions being blocked by the DUP over Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol.

Read more: Green Party leader: We're not just Alliance with a greener message

He will pledge that tackling the "outrageous" cost of childcare in Northern Ireland will be the SDLP's first priority in a restored Assembly.

"There will be no limit on our ambition to support working families," the Foyle MP is expected to tell party supporters.

The nationalist party's conference in Derry at St Columb's Hall on Saturday is scheduled to include debates on a "movement for a new Ireland".

It will also involve a live podcast recording for the New Ireland Commission, the SDLP's civic forum set up to consider future constitutional arrangements on the island.

Mr Eastwood is also expected to reflect on the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement peace deal, describing it as a "real revolution".

He will tell attendees: "I feel the hope of that time again. I believe we have it in our power to lead a new revolution in Irish politics."

In a pre-conference interview, Mr Eastwood told Belfast Live that unionists have been engaging in "quiet conversations" with the New Ireland Commission for the past 18 months.

The Foyle MP said his party is "best placed" to make the arguments for a united Ireland.

TUV's annual conference will take place in the Royal Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

In his speech to attendees, TUV leader Jim Allister will heavily criticise the Windsor Framework deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

He is expected to day the new agreement between the UK and European Union on Irish Sea trading arrangements provides "no changes of substance, only tinkering".

Mr Allister is due to say that accepting the "Windsor Whitewash" would be to "accept that never again will Northern Ireland be a full part of the UK" and to "win the booby prize of a Sinn Féin First Minister".

"We are not in the business of taking the knee to either EU or Sinn Féin rule," the unionist North Antrim MLA is expected to tell supporters.

Former Brexit party MEP Ben Habib is among the other speakers expected to address the party conference.

Speaking before the conference, Mr Allister said the DUP would become "Protocol slaves" if the party agreed to restore Stormont following the Windsor Framework deal.

The Green Party's conference is being held at the Clayton Hotel in Belfast city centre, with the theme of a "cleaner, greener, fairer Northern Ireland".

It is scheduled to include a panel discussion with Irish Green Party leader Eamon Ryan and Ards and North councillor Rachel Woods about "green leadership on social and environmental justice".

Another discussion is expected to feature Hazel Chu, an Irish Green Party councillor and former lord mayor of Dublin.

Mal O'Hara, leader of the Greens in Northern Ireland, told Belfast Live in a pre-conference interview that his party is "not just Alliance with a greener message".

The North Belfast councilllor said they need to "clearly articulate those differences" after the Greens lost both their Stormont Assembly seats to the Alliance Party in elections last year.

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