A candidate for Aontú will be entering the race for a Fermanagh South Tyrone Assembly seat.

Councillor Denise Mullen will be contesting the upcoming assembly election.

Councillor Mullen, who lives in Moy, confirmed her candidacy to The Impartial Reporter this week.

She is in her second term as a local councillor for Mid Ulster Council, with the councillor initially elected as an SDLP candidate in 2014, before joining Aontú in 2019.

Growing up surrounded by politics, Councillor Mullen says that politics is in her DNA. She said: “My journey into politics started I guess from when I was born.

"My mother, Olive, was a civil rights activist in Dungannon in the Sixties and after marrying my father, Denis, [she] got him involved also.

“There were political meetings in our home, campaigns ran from the kitchen table, while growing up each election time was spent handwriting names and addresses onto thousands of election cards to be posted off, learning how to ‘do the election register’, so politics is undoubtedly in my DNA.”

Councillor Mullen’s father, Denis, was killed in September, 1975, by the Glenanne Gang.

Speaking on her and her party's aims, Councillor Mullen said: “Aontú offers a clear alternative to the Stormont establishment parties.

"Aontú offers change from the broken system of politics the North is currently trapped in, and a challenge to the parties who fail to represent the people.

“Our party offers a people-powered movement focused on the bread and butter issues affecting countless families across the North, from rising house prices, to preserving educational choice, to the cost of living.”

Speaking of the wider aims of the party, Councillor Mullen said: “We also are committed to taking practical steps to securing Irish unity, from speaking rights for Northern MPs in the Dáil, to constitution of a New Ireland forum.

"On defending the right to life, Aontú will oppose efforts by Westminster to foist abortion and euthanasia illegally upon the North. Aontú offers politics that work for the people of the North.”

Speaking on the current political situation affecting Northern Ireland, Councillor Mullen said: “Stormont is broken, and the establishment parties are avoiding the issues that matter most to our community.

"Stormont – with the DUP, UUP, SDLP, Sinn Féin and Alliance in situ – has presided over a time of spiralling costs and rapidly rising economic inequality in the North.”