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The Irish Liberal Democrat Society AGM 2020

By Audrey Eager | Thu 3rd December 2020 - 7:34 pm

From a small group that gathered in Bournemouth at Conference in September 2019, I am delighted to say that in a year on marked with a pandemic and all the troubles that this has brought, the first AGM of a new Irish caucus within the Liberal Democrats will be next Monday, 7^th December 2020 at 7pm.

We have two very special guest speakers joining us – Stephen Farry MP from the Alliance Party to speak on his work in Parliament over the last year, and Gerald Angley, Irish Deputy Ambassador to the UK. We look forward to hearing from them both.

As a new entity, we are working towards formal status within the Liberal Democrats, and as such, one of our main housekeeping goals has been to develop a new constitution for the Society and we will be presenting that work at the AGM next Monday.

Our goal is to create a voice for the Irish community within the Liberal Democrats as a whole. We have high ambitions but like most things, it is dependent on resources both in terms of money and time. However, from small acorns mighty acorns grow.

Since the referendum in 2016, Ireland has seen an unprecedented demand for Irish passports from Britain. In the 2011 Census, more than 430,300 people living in Britain identified themselves as Irish-born, down 37 per cent from the peak of 683,000 in 1961. In 2018, the Annual Population Survey by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) put the numbers of Irish-born people here at just 380,000. Since 2016, almost 100,000 first-time applications for Irish passports were received from people born in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. That’s the current big picture. Our mission is to help the Liberal Democrats reach out to this community.