THE deputy leader of the Green Party has been announced as a candidate for North Belfast in the forthcoming Assembly election.
Mal O'Hara has been a representative for the Castle DEA on Belfast City Council since 2019.
Born and bred in North Belfast, he is a well known LGBTQ activist, a board member of a regional mental health charity and has worked for over a decade in the community sector.
Cllr O’Hara said: “I am proud of my record delivering for North Belfast as a councillor over the last two and a half years, and am excited to have been selected as a candidate for next year’s Assembly election.
“As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, I have led on transforming the city, securing the pedestrianisation of Union Street, ensuring public money reaches the most vulnerable, and enhancing transparency and accountability in the Council.
"During the first wave of the pandemic, I set up a volunteer soup kitchen which delivered more than 17,000 meals to vulnerable people in North and West Belfast in the first three months of the crisis.
“I worked to set up Belfast’s first Climate Unit, putting us on a trajectory of net zero emissions, and the Council is now conducting its first detailed air assessment in over a decade. Up to one in 20 deaths in Belfast are linked to air pollution, and recent figures have shown that 84,000 new cases of disease in Northern Ireland will be caused by Northern Ireland’s unclean air by 2035. But despite the serious scale of the problem, the five-party Executive has failed to bring forward a Clean Air Strategy and the policies we need to reduce air pollution.
“In Stormont, the Green Party NI punches above its weight, with our two MLAs currently progressing three Bills through the Assembly. Whilst the Executive parties just offer us deadlock and division, the Green Party NI is delivering for Northern Ireland.”
