The only path to uniting the people of this island is through the spirit of partnership, cooperation and reconciliation that the Good Friday Agreement is built on. Delivering a new Ireland demands that we all spill our sweat to forge new enduring relationships between the people of this island and that we demonstrate to everyone that there is an equal place for all of us.

That's why the SDLP has established a New Ireland Commission that will seek to engage with every community, sector and generation on this island to build new proposals that can generate a consensus on our future constitutional arrangements. This work will be challenging, it will demand we stretch ourselves again to accommodate our communities in all their difference and diversity but it is, ultimately, necessary that we plot a course through the immense period of change we’re living through.

Leaders in the SDLP worked hard to forge a consensus for peace that would allow everyone to pursue their own constitutional ambitions free from the threat of violence. The new generation of SDLP leaders is prepared to spill our sweat again to create a path toward a united, just and reconciled new Ireland.

Watch SDLP Leader Colum Eastwood MP in conversation with broadcaster Aoife Moore at this year's Gasyard Féile discussing our vision of the future.

Read South Belfast MLA Matthew O'Toole's address on the New Ireland Commission at Queen's University Belfast in August 2023

If you would like to be updated on the exciting work of the New Ireland Commission, please click here to register your information.