CLARE Bailey is currently the leader of the Green Party and has been an elected MLA since 2016 when the Greens won their first seat in South Belfast.
With two MLAs at Stormont last time, she is keen to carry on the work the party has been engaged in.
“It’s been a tumultuous mandate," she says looking back. "I was on the Justice Committee in 2016, by January 2017 the Executive collapsed and there were three years of getting used to what it was to be an MLA and then I came back in January 2020, followed by Covid which was a new way of working. It was a learning curve without a doubt.”
She added: “I’m very proud of the work we have achieved in the two years. We have two MLAs, myself and Rachel Woods, and we introduced three private member's bills as well as our regular constituency work, so I am delighted at pushing and implementing the Climate Change Bill, the Safe Leave Bill and the Safe Access Bill too.”
The Green Party’s most notable achievement has been the introduction of the Climate Change Bill, which Environment Minister Edwin Poots attempted to water down. However, Clare said her party’s strong cross-party work ethic ensured the Bill passed with the Green Party’s core points still intact.
“I think the Climate Bill went brilliantly, we produced the Bill as a private member's bill with cross-party support and forced Edwin Poots’ hand and he was running to keep up. When he did produce his version of a Climate Bill it was a lot weaker and didn’t have the same structures and wasn’t as wide in scope, but because we’d done the groundwork and got the cross-party support, by the time Poots’ Bill was ready for consideration we were collectively able to amend that.
"So we got 12 amendments accepted into it, so I’m very pleased we got to have the Just Transition amendments embedded into it and to get the Climate Action Plans for every department was critical, so by the time the bill was passed it was much more in the image of what we envisioned, and it was down to our cross-party working on it.”
Clare said the Climate Bill has been popular with local residents and many have changed their thinking, becoming more aware of the looming climate crisis and the need to do something about it.
“The Climate Change Bill has been coming up a lot on the doors, the conversations on the doors are really starting to shift and I think it’s because of the conversations and learning that’s going on in schools. Children are having conversations with their families. When I first started canvassing back in 2010 we were seen as a single issue party and people felt it wasn't relevant to politics here but that’s not the case any more. Our track record has changed that."
She says the biggest current issue at the moment is the cost of living crisis, but that all the current crises were being made worse by inaction on climate change, and tackling the climate crisis is the best solution to getting the other crises under control.
“The climate crisis is the biggest crisis that we’re all facing. The cost of living crisis is coming up on the doors, the energy crisis and the squeeze on families is coming up, but the solutions to all those lie in dealing with the climate crisis overall. Our dependency on fossil fuels and the energy crisis hasn’t come about because of the recent war in Ukraine, it’s come about because we haven’t changed into a more secure and renewable supply, or created the jobs to help us move forward with that.
“We need the education sector to step up and help people retrain so they can work in these new jobs and industries. The solutions are as interlinked as the problems are.”
She added: “People are really suffering, they were suffering before the energy hikes started and lockdown and the pandemic has caused a lot of harm to a lot of people, but you can’t separate that from the Tories being in government. I can’t think of any time when the Tories have been in government where we haven’t suffered and here we are again.”
The Green leader said that Northern Ireland needs to comprehensively rethink its transport system and there should be a switch towards more sustainable and efficient modes of transport.
“We need a proper active travel plan in place across the North and here in South Belfast. Our travel situation here is so poor. Our bus services go in straight lines, in arterial routes rather than circular, so a lot of people who depend on public transport end up with a lot of their time wasted.
"Around 40 per cent of people in Belfast don’t have access to a car so we are dependent on public transport, which is underdeveloped. In Belfast we used to have a citywide tram system that went as far as Jordanstown and the Springfield Road. That infrastructure is still there, only we’ve tarmacked over the top of it for the car. Our train system goes right out to Derry, Strabane, Enniskillen and Fermanagh, and is still there, it just needs the political will to be revitalised.
"It’s unsustainable to not be investing in these things. I would love to see an active travel plan for South Belfast. I want to see our greenways linked up – for example I want to see the Comber Greenway link up with Carryduff. We need to see more bridges across the Lagan, for example, to see more connectivity across the city in general.”
Clare said the strength of South Belfast lies in its diversity and hopes that South Belfast will once again elect a Green voice to champion the environment and work with other parties to ensure the climate crisis is tackled.
“South Belfast is an outlier as a constituency and we’re seeing people keen to see a Green voice in the Executive. South Belfast is the only constituency to have five separate parties across five seats and I think that’s a testament to the diversity of South Belfast and how people can work together living alongside one another.”
