Keynote Speaker
Thursday 9th November 2017
12.30pm during the ISBE AGM
Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir
Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir is the current Minister of Finance, who sits in the Stormont Assembly as the Sinn Féin representative for South Belfast.
Máirtín previously sat on the Finance and Enterprise committees in Stormont and played a lead role in the Finance Committees investigation of the NAMA-Cerberus scandal.
Máirtín sat on Belfast City Council from 1987-1997 and was among a new generation of Sinn Féin councillors who transformed Belfast City Council through a series of landmark legal challenges which guaranteed equal rights for all citizens.
As an entrepreneur Máirtín developed successful community media publications in both Belfast with the Belfast Media Group and the US. Through his connections with Irish America, he pioneered the Belfast-Boston sister city agreement and founded the annual Belfast International Homecoming.
An Irish speaker, he believes strongly in the promotion of culture as the bedrock of successful and dynamic communities. His commitment to diversity was evidenced when he appointed ten chaplains — representing the main and minority faiths in the city — on his appointment as Lord Mayor of Belfast in 2014.
Mairtín gained many awards from that year in office including the Community Relations Council Award for Civic Leadership, the PRIDE Festival Award for Best Political Contribution to the LGBT Community, and The Ancient Order of Hibernians of America JFK Medal, their highest honour.
As Finance Minister, he has pursued a bold agenda while protecting the public purse. In particular, he has been to the fore in exposing the DUP’s RHI Scandal and demanding the loss to the public purse be stopped. In his short period as Finance Minister, he introduced a raft of new initiatives including a Rates Rethink which would make the domestic rates system fairer while directing £22m of investment into small retail and hospitality businesses and introducing unprecedented empowerment zones in areas of need.
A graduate of Queens University Belfast, he is married to Helen O’Hare and the couple have four children. Máirtín is a keen runner. He writes a weekly enzine and maintains a Twitter feed at @newbelfast.