Debate contribution: Belfast's Night-time Economy

Debate contribution by Mr David Brooks on 4 February 2025.

MLA

Mr David Brooks

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

4 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Belfast's Night-time Economy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4779707

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like colleagues, I have a speech prepared but I will try to paraphrase it and get through the key points. As my colleague from the SDLP said, the night-time economy in Belfast and across Northern Ireland contributes £2 billion to the local economy. It employs thousands of people, from hospitality staff and security personnel to musicians, artists and taxi drivers. The list is endless. However, the night-time economy does face challenges, some of which were outlined by my colleague Joanne Bunting. Sometimes there are increasing concerns around the perception of safety and so on. At times in the social media era, we can be unfair to ourselves relative to other cities. These are challenges that all cities across the globe face, but, nevertheless, I know that work is ongoing in many organisations, some of it outlined by my colleague Mr Brett — the council and others — to try to combat that. We have a thriving city in terms of its venues. We want to see support for those in the hospitality and entertainment sectors and support for our independent music venues. The Oh Yeah centre has been mentioned. Our music venues, theatres and nightclubs are at the heart of the night-time economy. We have talked about Matthew O'Toole's clubbing years. I have a wide taste in music, but I am very much in the country era. I was going to use that to illustrate the point. Here in Belfast, not only have we had the biggest names at the SSE Arena but there are the traditional names: the Empire, the Limelight and the Ulster Hall. More recently, the Belfast Telegraph Building, having been put to different use, has hosted artists in the past year. We have had emerging talents such as Gareth Hamilton, an artist from Castlederg who has just moved to Belfast's sister city of Nashville. As a city, we should do much more to build upon that link. Others, such as Lainey Wilson and Megan Moroney, may not mean much to people here, but they have played in those venues here in our city in the past year. In the US, they are playing to arenas and stadiums, and I think that there is an appreciation of those private venues where people have invested their own money over the years to build Belfast's name. They are bringing those talents and those experiences to people in Belfast. We should be thankful for that, because Belfast's name and night-time economy is built upon their efforts. Transport has been mentioned many times. Night buses are a really important intervention. We do need to sort the taxi situation. I am allergic to alcohol, so, quite often, I volunteer to become a taxi driver at the weekends when we are out with friends. Most of my friends, even long before COVID, have complained about the taxi issue, and that is a barrier if you want to attract tourism and visitors to the city to experience everything that we have here. The night buses also allow us to bring the tourists out of the city centre, as has been mentioned, to our main thoroughfares. In the east, I think of Boundary and Bullhouse craft beer venues. I think of Scott's Jazz Club at Ballyhackamore and some of the eateries there as well. I think of Banana Block and CS Lewis Square, which regularly host events. Night buses bring the benefits of tourism to those communities and bring people into the city centre. I am running short of time. One thing that I really want to mention is the Belfast agenda ambition for 66,000 people to live in the city centre. That would make a cafe culture and some of the other things that we want to see in our city centre viable and sustainable into the future. It is one of the key things that we have to achieve if we want to see change. We can talk about how that message is put across in constituencies, but it is people living in the city centre who will drive politicians' greater interest in the city centre. I welcome the council's ambition, and it will, I think, have a transformative effect. Like everyone else, I welcome the appointment of the night tsar. That is a really positive intervention —

— but I will claim him for East Belfast rather than North Belfast, as my colleague mentioned —

— because he is, I believe, an East Belfast resident.

743 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:52 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9. The text was identical to an already-assessed record, so the same answers were reused.

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