In conversation with Paul Boggs MLA

And what was your relationship with other councillors, like unions, councillors, or STLP, or other types of office? The working ambience, or even the relationships?

I think, particularly at local council, you have to work with other people.

Now, I don't say that in a way that you're chained to a desk and made work for them, but you have to in the sense that we're not going to get anywhere if we don't work together.

So even those that we're diametrically opposed to in terms of political unionism and their reps in council Their constituents still want to see the play park delivered.

Their constituents still want to see clean streets.

They still want to see a better future, whether that's at even local level, like local councils.

They might not agree with us on the better future that we want to see, and we don't agree on the better future that they think that they're pursuing.

But in terms of working in daily relationships, I mean, you have to get on with each other.

And I would say, particularly in areas that I represent, you know, Straban continues to be one of the most deprived areas across the north.

There are similar unionist and loyalist areas within our councils that are the same.

And what I want to see for my constituents is a lot similar to what those other councillors want to see.

In terms of the SDLP, again, we obviously have a broad agreement of where we want to see ourselves loving in the coming years, and therefore that's something we can build common ground on.

But in terms of the DeliverAid local councils, I always try to, and our council team always try to work as best we can with other people, because that's what we're going to do.

How

do you define the council's role in terms of as a platform there is a national question there is the implementation of the good freddie agreement there are aphorandums in our issue do you find that you're able to knit that into what you were doing

i think so because well first of all our council was the first to to bring and pass a motion in terms of setting up of a unity working group um within council and we've been very successful in terms of our engagement with the community voluntary sector with local business and all the rest But at the end of the day, and I think you'll agree, people at grassroots level are miles ahead of some and even political leadership positions in terms of where we are at in the constitutional question.

The fact that, as I talk about, you know, working class loyalists in unionist areas face the same issues that they do in nationalist and republican areas.

And therefore, how do we create something better that, you know, betters and empowers the lives of those people? So I think it's easier at times to try and make people recognise that there can be something better, and our proposal for that is through Unity, and show them at that very grassroots level how you do that.

And I think the engagement with different sectors and all can at times be easier whenever you're chatting to people in real terms of what it is that it doesn't.

you know, sometimes people can maybe say that Irish Unity sits way up here and it's something that's above us and it's kind of hanging over our heads and all the rest, but it's not.

If we can try and make it down to those grassroots issues that you do deal with in council and you can sit and say at that grassroots level as a councillor, then I think that's maybe part of how we begin to persuade more people that it's a real tangible thing that will be better for everybody.