Slater arrives at Limavady, ready to chat with some locals.

Hey all! It's a pleasure to be here as Labour's representative for Northern Ireland.

Labour are deeply sympathetic to the rural community and the struggles that they are unnecessarily forced to face by consistent policy failures that have actively discouraged a rural lifestyle.

It's time for a true revolution in how we approach rural life. Today, rural life is systemically discouraged as a result of lacking public services, both in quantity and quality. For example, rural people are often less able to access healthcare as a fact of where they live and the services they do have are of a lesser variety compared to urban services, meaning those who are unfortunate enough to end up ill in rural parts of Northern Ireland have to be transferred to Belfast, or if they are lucky Derry. They are further away from their family and less able to benefit from the support coming from them, leading to worse outcomes and a needlessly painful experience.

The same goes for education; schools and universities are often far away from rural people, with students often having to travel for hours per day to access proper education, leading to them moving away from home and causing disastrous brain drain in our towns and villages. Being in Limavady, it is lucky to have a campus of the North West Regional College nearby, but this is not a pleasure enjoyed by many, and it's clear things need to change.

Labour will work with the executive to end this problem once and for all; we will expand the amount of rural hospitals in northern ireland, expand tertiary education facilities in NI with a special focus on the South and the West, and we will invest in proper public transport to ensure anyone can reasonably get to public services in their region within an hour.

Labour understands the struggle that rural people face, and the deep geographical inequalities created as a result, and I promise that a vote for myself is a vote for a strong rural advocate who will deliver in government.

Thank you!!