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16 June 2011

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NIALL Ó DONNGHAILE | SINN FÉIN COUNCILLOR BECOMES BELFAST’S YOUNGEST-EVER MAYOR

Mayoral chain on young republican shoulders

Niall Ó Donnghaile stands in front of a painting of Sinn Féin’s first Mayor of Belfast, Alex Maskey

BY PEADAR WHELAN

ELECTED to Belfast City Council for the first time on May 5th and and newly installed as the Sinn Féin Mayor of Belfast — the youngest in the city’s history —  on May 26th, 26-year-old Niall Ó Donnghaile set down a marker that he wants to be a mayor for all the people when one of his very first acts was to visit the loyalist heartland of the Shankill Road in support of a community scheme whose funding was under threat.
His rearrangement of paintings in the Mayor’s Parlour caused outbursts from some unionists infuriated by headlines that suggested the Sinn Féin mayor had a total clear-out of portraits of the British royal family.
The parlour was previously dominated by unionist symbols. Now the 1916 Proclamation and a picture of the United Irishmen take pride of place, with some commentators at least noting that many of the United Irishmen were Protestants. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her husband have been moved but are still present in the parlour. Pictures of Prince Charles and the Queen Mother have been removed and now there is also room for a piece that represents the city’s new ethnic communities.
As a ‘cainnteoir Gaeilge’, the Ballymacarrett native opened his address to Belfast City Council in Irish to the ire of some unionist politicians, some of whose crustier members felt the post should be the preserve of ‘old hands’ and that he’s too young to be the face of Belfast City. Veteran Progressive Unionist Party Coucillor Hugh Smyth quipped: “I have overcoats in the wardrobe that are older.”
It has been widely reported that the new deputy mayor, DUP Councillor Ruth Patterson, a veteran of the Ulster Defence Regiment, refused to accept Niall’s congratulatory handshake and ignored him, despite the fact that DUP leader Peter Robinson and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness work together leading the Executive.
As we settle down in City Hall for the interview (which he Niall had tweeted in advance to his 1,275 followers), the newly-installed Mayor of Belfast points to an Irish News feature on the tenth anniversary of the Holy Cross Primary School dispute when loyalist protesters picketed and attacked very young Catholic schoolgirls trying to get to the north Belfast school. The 14-week-long Holy Cross outrage made news headlines around the world as international observers saw comparisons with Alabama schools civil rights struggles in the 1960s USA.
“I was still at school when the Holy Cross dispute was going on,” the new Mayor notes. As a community activist in a nationalist enclave in east Belfast, the ‘Siege of Short Strand’ has obviously had an impact on the young Niall Ó Donnghaile’s formative political years, years that were steeped in conflict.
As a native of east Belfast and from Short Strand, Niall speaks of the pride he had when he secured the first Sinn Féin seat in the area in almost ten years.
“It was a massive lift for the district that I was elected and then for me to be nominated as mayor it was a double boost.”
“It is also important for the district because the Short Strand and Ballymacarrett  has, to all intents and purposes, been disenfranchised over the years by being  mostly represented by unionist politicians who had no interest in the area.
“The people now believe they have a voice”, says Niall.
And that voice is steeled by generations of republicanism.
Both Niall’s parents are republican former POWs. Uncles on both sides of his family have been imprisoned while his maternal grandfather was on the prison ship the Al Rawdah where he learned Irish. Niall wore a Fáinne fashioned from the ship’s copper piping on the night he was installed as mayor, in an especillay poignant personal and historical moment.
Brushing over Ruth Patterson’s refusal to take his hand when he offered her his congratulations on her election as deputy mayor, Niall describes it as “unfortunate”. He adds:
“It goes against the grain of all the positive stuff that is going on but the truth that my door is always open to Ruth and anyone else and I am prepared to work with them for the good of the people.
“In their terms as mayor, Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey and Tom Hartley both led by example and opened City Hall to the people of Belfast regardless of race, colour of creed; I will follow in their footsteps.”
By the time An Phoblacht got to meet him as Mayor, Niall had already made two visits to the staunchly unionist Shankill Road.
His first was to support the Artability project, which caters for people who are, as Niall puts it, “differently abled”.
“The work they do is brilliant so I told the people that I would do whatever I could to help. Ironically, it was during the watch of the previous Health Minister, the Ulster Unionist Party’s Michael McGimpsey, that the project lost the funding they need.
“Being on the Shankill with the people involved with Artability was a really humbling experience and I am looking forward to seeing them in City Hall as I’ve extended an invitation to them to display their work there.
“My obligation is to the citizens of Belfast and the underpinning quality of my term in office is inclusiveness. I want to ensure that any citizen of Belfast can come here and know they are welcome.”
The new mayor wants to to send a positive message out to young people that politics can be a positive calling.
“I want to challenge this cynical notion that all politicians are chancers.
“Too many young people are disaffected, too many come from economically-deprived areas, too many are risk to self-harming and suicide, and too many suffer mental health problems.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant but I want young people to see the work I do as something that would inspire them.
“As we say as Gaeilge, ‘mol anoige agus tiocfaidh sí’ (praise the youth and it’ll come).
It goes without saying that, as someone who was educated through the medium of Irish, Niall is very much behind the promotion of Belfast’s Ceathrú Gaeltacht/Irish Quarter.
“I certainly am throwing my weight behind the development of An Ceathrú Gaeltacht and the promotion of the arts, music, enterprise, sport, media and of course education through the medium of Irish.
“Also I want to dismiss the notion that Irish is for one section of our community to the exclusion of the other. It is not. It is the language of our country and I hope in time will be embraced by all.”
Niall’s plans to celebrate his 26th birthday at Slane Castle enjoying the Kings of Leon went out the window due to his unforeseen mayoral responsibilities.
So the ‘highlight’ of his first weekend as Belfast’s First Citizen was watching Armagh drub his beloved Down in the Ulster championship on a soaking wet Athletic Grounds.
“It could be worse,” he grins. “I could be from Antrim.”

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