iIrish asked the leaders of Ireland’s political parties to share their news with our readers. SDLP leader Claire Hanna MP responds.
Building a New Ireland for everyone
By SDLP Leader Claire Hanna MP
Last month, Belfast put itself on the map for all the right reasons when it hosted the All-Ireland Fleadh for the first time in the competition’s history.
For a week, the city was filled with music, dance and people from every tradition and background. It was an inclusive celebration of the rich tapestry of culture and identity that defines modern Ireland.
For me, it offered a glimpse of what a New Ireland could be: confident in its traditions, comfortable with difference and big enough to belong to everyone.
Irish unity will only succeed if we build something worth joining.
– Claire Hanna, MP
That matters because, almost 30 years after the Good Friday Agreement, we are once again asking fundamental questions about the future of our island
Irish America knows better than most how much can change in a generation.
The United States played an indispensable role in helping us secure peace. American political leaders invested time, energy and political capital in Northern Ireland when doing so was neither easy nor inevitable. Irish America sustained that commitment, ensuring that Northern Ireland remained on the agenda in Washington.
That partnership helped transform our island.
But peace was never supposed to be the end of the story.
In Northern Ireland, our political institutions have repeatedly collapsed. Public services have deteriorated. Hospital waiting lists stretch for years, tens of thousands of people are waiting for a home and too many decisions about our future remain trapped in the politics of division.
Brexit has also changed our relationship with both Britain and Europe. Northern Ireland was taken out of the European Union despite a majority here voting to remain, disrupting relationships across an island where people live, work and trade across the border every day.
So, as we approach the 30th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the SDLP is asking a simple question: what do we want the next 30 years to look like?
We believe the interests of people across Northern Ireland can ultimately be better served in a new, inclusive and united Ireland.
But achieving that cannot simply mean setting a date for a border poll and dividing people into winners and losers.
Irish unity will only succeed if we build something worth joining.
That means doing the hard work now: answering difficult questions, building relationships across old divides and demonstrating to people from British and unionist traditions that their identity, culture and heritage will not merely be tolerated in a New Ireland, but respected and celebrated.
And it means recognising what Northern Ireland can contribute.
This is not a failed place waiting to be absorbed or rescued. Northern Ireland is home to extraordinary artists and entrepreneurs, world-class universities, beautiful landscapes and communities with enormous resilience and creativity.
Irish unity should not simply mean bolting a northern state onto the south, but instead should be an opportunity to build something new together, drawing on the identities and traditions of everyone who shares this island and learning from the painful divisions of our past.
The Good Friday Agreement showed what was possible when political leaders in Ireland, Britain and the United States were prepared to imagine a future that once seemed impossible.
Those same principles must guide the next chapter.
For generations, people left Ireland and crossed the Atlantic in search of opportunity.
Our ambition should be to build an Ireland where future generations do not have to leave to find it. We saw a glimpse of what that might look like during the Fleadh.
The SDLP want to build a New Ireland that gives space to our potential, to celebrate diversity and all shades of Irish identity. Our best days are ahead of us, if we can work together to achieve them.
