THE Ireland’s Future group has confirmed its next flagship event will take place in Belfast, but not until 2024.
The organisation, set up to promote and encourage conversations on a future united Ireland, staged multiple public events across the island, the US and in Britain during 2022.
It included a major conference in Dublin’s 3Arena in October and a sold out event in the Ulster Hall during November.
In an executive summary outlining the group’s 2022 activities and its plans for 2023, Ireland’s Future said its activities had resulted in “significant operating costs”.
While the civic body plans to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2023, its next major public event may not take place until June 2024.
In an effort to fund its continuing engagement with 11 political parties as well as with businesses, agriculture and trade unions, Ireland’s Future said it will seek to generate fresh revenue streams in 2023, including the development of a patron scheme in the US.
Plans for 2023 will however include the publication of new discussion paper on health as well as a number of ‘focused’ seminars for young people, women, and people with disabilities and from a multicultural background.
It will also seek to engage with Irish diaspora in Scotland and England, and continue engaging with the SNP.
With Labour widely tipped to win the next General Election, the group said its engagements in England will include “significant figures in the British Labour Party and other political party figures who share the aims and objectives of Ireland’s Future”.
Ireland’s Future said its activities over the next year will also see it publish a ‘pathway to the referendum’ document, which it said will include “chronological steps” to an Irish unity referendum between now and 2030.