Derry's year in review: April 2023

As April came in, with the local government elections approaching, the families of two young Derry men killed by drunk drivers have expressed their anger at the Ulster Unionist Party’s selection of Derek Hussey as a candidate in the upcoming Local Government Elections.

Martin Gallagher Jr (25) was killed at Hallowe’en 2009 as he crossed the Racecourse Road in the city.
Robert Bradley Jr (20) was killed on December 16, 2000 as he walked home from his work in the Students’ Union of Nottingham Trent University.

Derek Hussey, who represents the Derg District Electoral Area on Derry City and Strabane District Council has three convictions for drink driving. The most recent was in March 2016 and followed earlier convictions in 2004 and 2011.

As a result of his 2016 conviction, Derek Hussey was suspended by the UUP however he was reinstated when he completed his community service.

Martin Gallagher Jr (25) and Robert Bradley Jr (20) who were killed by drunk drivers.

In July 2019, following a complaint to the Local Government Commissioner of Standards, Derek Hussey was disqualified from Derry City and Strabane District Council for 15 months.

The Gallagher and Bradley families said they had decided to speak to Derry News because they had been unable to secure a meeting with UUP leader Doug Beattie.

Also in April, the charity Asthma and Lung UK (NI) has described the North of Ireland as being in “lung health crisis without a strategy in place” to address the situation.

Derry City and Strabane were two of the areas in the North in 2021 which recorded the highest number of deaths from respiratory illness.

British National Statistics Office (NSO) figures recorded a shocking 64 deaths from respiratory illness here and in Strabane for every 100,000 people.

The combined area was effectively among those with the highest number of deaths from respiratory illness per head of the population. It ranked second for lung deaths in Britain, with the North as a whole registering 122 deaths per 100,000 resulting from respiratory illness.

Asthma and Lung UK (NI) has called on the Department of Health to introduce a Lung Health Strategy as a matter of urgency, to cut deaths and hospitalisations from lung conditions.

It was also announced, Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States of America, would deliver the keynote address at Derry's Guildhall on Tuesday afternoon, April 18.

The event was organised by the John and Pat Hume Foundation to present a posthumous tribute to John Hume and David Trimble, 1998 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.

The artists performing at the event included Phil Coulter, Derry born Neil Hannon from Divine Comedy, young Derry singer Roe, and Tim Wheeler, from the band ASH, who played at the historic YES gig in 1998.

Representatives of the Hume and Trimble families were also in attendance.

The audience for the event was primarily young people from the Foyle Learning Network, Ulster University and youth organisations in Derry.

On another positive note, rail campaigners ‘Into The West’ were celebrating yet another record-breaking year for Derry’s railway station, which has registered its highest ever passenger numbers.

The station continued to rise up the leaderboard of the North’s busiest stations.

Figures secured from Translink for the 12 months to March 2023 saw a phenomenal 723,776 passengers travel to and from Derry by train across that period.

This represented an increase of more than a quarter of a million passengers compared to the previous year, which was itself also a record year, and amounts to a 54% year-on-year rise.

It is also the largest number of passengers that Derry’s railway station has ever carried, and has propelled the city up one place on the leaderboard to become the North’s 8th busiest station.

In fact, Derry is close to overtaking Coleraine, which is in 7th place.

Steve Bradley, chairperson of ‘Into the West’ said the situation was even more remarkable when current passenger numbers were compared to the pre-covid era.

However, campaigners in the city revealed in April, 25 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, statistics indicated regional imbalance is actually worsening in the North, to the detriment of Derry.

Garbhán Downey and Conal McFeely, members of the Derry University Group, argued the focus for the next 25 years  must be on regenerating Derry and the border areas. 

“It was,” they said, “time to reverse a century of ‘east coast first’ policies”.

According to Garbhán Downey the tale of two cities, of Derry versus Belfast, needed to end abruptly “for all our sakes”.

He added: “Given the particular new opportunities open to the North West, there is an immediate responsibility on all of us, Derry, Belfast, Dublin, London and Brussels, to redress the systemic neglect and depredation of this region together.”

Easter Monday petrol bombs thrown at Police by children, four suspected pipe bombs left in the City Cemetery and fresh threats of violence from the New IRA, were just some of the events that occurred in April in the city.

Police came under attack in the Creggan area of the city whilst present at the 1916 Commemoration Committee Easter Rising march.

Crowds gathered in Central Drive in preparation for the march.

Police said this event was un-notified to the Parades Commission and therefore participants would automatically commit criminal offences if it went ahead.

At the same event, a speech was made to encourage people to join the IRA.

The New IRA claimed it continued to “recruit, train and target” and warned the PSNI and other security forces to stay out of Creggan ahead of Monday's march.

April closed with the Education Department’s decision to axe funding for the Léargas programme, a heavily criticised decision.
Locally the Léargas programme, which provided Irish lessons for children attending English-medium primary schools, was run by Cultúrlann Úí Chanáin.

The programme provided approximately 1,600 students, between 9 and 11 years old, with up to 75 Irish lessons a week. In its 10 years of operation Léargas has been rolled out to 14 schools in Derry and one in Strabane.

Carol Nic Conmara, the education co-ordinator at Cultúrlann Úí Chanáin said there was a huge demand for the programme locally.

Gaeilgeoir Seán Mac Cearáin described the decision as a “big blow to the Irish language in Derry”.