Water charges, health and 'Building the Peace' to open Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin Friday evening

WATER CHARGES, health and “Building the Peace” are the main issues to be debated at the opening of the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin on Friday evening with keynote addresses by Mary Lou McDonald and Martin McGuinness.

Some 2,000 delegates will pack in to the landmark Convention Centre Dublin on the Liffey dockside in the weekend of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising by Irish republicans against British rule.

Elections to the Stormont Assembly will be held on Thursday 5 May, the anniversary of the death on hunger strike in 1981 in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh by Bobby Sands MP.

To be opened by Sinn Féin Ard Mhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath Críona Ní Dhálaigh at 6pm, the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis this evening will feature sections on “Building the Peace” in which there will be significant contributions by National Chairperson Declan Kearney, the driving force behind the party's outreach and reconciliation initiative Uncomfortable Conversations, and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.

The vision of 1916 remains unfulfilled, that we live in an Ireland where not all of the children are cherished equally, the former Education Minister will say.

The Derryman who ran as a candidate for President of Ireland will say that Ireland is not a nation that is united and free but it is one which Sinn Féin is dedicated to building as the only all-Ireland party capable of achieving it and committed to the goals of the men and women of 1916.

● The Sinn Féin Ard Fheis runs from Friday evening to Saturday evening at the Convention Centre Dublin, culminating with the Presidential Address by Gerry Adams TD live on RTÉ TV at 8:30pm Saturday.

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