General Election 2024: Aontú Fighting the Elections West of the Bann on ‘Bread and Butter’ Issues

The political party Aontú are fielding ten candidates in the Westminster elections.

Closer to home they’re running candidates Gemma Brolly, East Derry, John Boyle in Foyle and Alixandra Halliday in Mid Ulster.

Aontú more than doubled their number of council seats in the recent local election in the south, and Ms Brolly is the party’s Deputy Leader.

An Irish Medium teacher and wife of a local farmer from Ballerin, she served as Youth President for Saint Vincent de Paul for five years, she’s the Irish language Officer of her local GAA club and is also a Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator and is hugely frustrated at the many flaws in our education system. Over the past number of years Gemma has been busy campaigning to try to save A&E and Maternity Services at Causeway Hospital and organised a very well attended protest on the issue last year.

John Boyle, who is running for the party in Foyle, currently works for an all-Ireland non-profit Human Rights organisation. John previously spent years running a small business which he says gave him a great insight into the challenges faced by many small to medium enterprises. He is deeply committed to ideals of equality and prosperity for all.

Alixandra Halliday, for Mid Ulster is a graduate of the North West Regional College and holds an Honours BA degree from the University of Ulster. She has worked in the retail sector and hospitality sector. In 2017 she travelled to Greece to undertake humanitarian work helping Syrian refugees. She also works with her family’s business to overcome the challenges of Brexit.

Ms Brolly says that the north of Ireland is becoming a “city state” with over-investment in Belfast to the neglect of Derry; “We need investment in the University in Derry. This election offers the people of this area an opportunity to send a ‘wake up’ message to the establishment parties – to express their disgust over the closure of Causeway Coast Maternity services, and to resist the further depletion of our health service here”.

Ms Brolly added that “much of the investment in the north happens east of the Bann while people here are crying out for funding and resources – where we’re smothered under a mental health and addiction epidemic”.

“Huge problems within education, with 400 children still with no educational place for September, children waiting years on diagnosis and support, limited access to resources and support and no such thing as early intervention. We have double the children struggling with social and emotional difficulties on the Special Needs Register now than we had five years ago and we have over treble the amount of children completely deregistered from our education system.

“Aontú are determined to shoehorn these issues into this election that has so far focussed on personalities and the same old constitutional quicksand.”