{"id":673485,"date":"2026-01-04T15:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673485\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T15:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:04:11","slug":"northern-ireland-politics-needs-to-become-more-representative-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673485\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland politics needs to become more representative, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politics<\/strong> in Northern Ireland<\/strong> needs to attract more people from ethnic minorities<\/strong> to be reflective of the population, Andrew Muir has said.<\/p>\n

However, Mr Muir said a lack of comment about him being Stormont\u2019s first openly gay minister shows the level of progress in the region.<\/p>\n

The Alliance Party politician said he considered it a privilege to serve as Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.<\/p>\n

\n I’m very conscious that I’m the first openly gay member of the Executive since its foundation<\/p>\n

Andrew Muir\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, the department has faced multiple issues in his time in office, including the environmental emergency at Lough Neagh.<\/p>\n

Mr Muir said: \u201cWhen I started, the first thing that happened was I was handed a phone, and was told, if that rings, there\u2019s probably something serious happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it rings quite often now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy a challenge. I wouldn\u2019t have done taking this job on if I thought it was easy, because I like doing things that are hard, and I like working through the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The minister said he deals with the negativity in politics by going for a run to get his \u201chead showered\u201d.<\/p>\n

He has completed 11 marathons and has a parkrun 5k personal best of 19 minutes and six seconds.<\/p>\n

Mr Muir said: \u201cI think you need to have something.<\/p>\n

\u201cRunning is also where I connect with people outside the world of politics, and I realise that there\u2019s a very different perspective sometimes in the issues that we\u2019re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI\u2019m very conscious that I\u2019m the first openly gay member of the Executive since its foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that that\u2019s went largely without comment has shown the level of progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we need to go further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sad that the last person from an ethnic minority background who was serving in the Assembly was my friend and colleague, Anna Lo.<\/p>\n

\n We just need to be conscious that we can play the ball rather than the player, and I think that’s what hopefully the ambition should be in the time ahead<\/p>\n

Andrew Muir\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWe need to have an Assembly that\u2019s more reflective of society and also somewhere that\u2019s attractive, somewhere that people want to serve, because some of the debates can be rather toxic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to be conscious that we can play the ball rather than the player, and I think that\u2019s what hopefully the ambition should be in the time ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Muir said he had a good relationship with the farming community despite the Ulster Farmers\u2019 Union passing a vote of no confidence in his department last year.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI meet farmers on a regular basis. The reality is that people are respectful, they\u2019re engaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet trolls do not reflect and do not fairly characterise the farming community in Northern Ireland as progressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks towards the future. We have challenges, we work through those.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Politics in Northern Ireland needs to attract more people from ethnic minorities to be reflective of the population,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-673485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115837446834016715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}