FERMANAGH woman, Tanya Jones, will be stepping down as deputy leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland later this year in order to return to higher education.

The writer, former solicitor and anti-fracking campaigner told her party’s annual conference at the weekend that she was planning to begin a masters degree in environmental law at the University of Dundee this autumn.

Making the announcement towards the end of her speech, she said: “But meanwhile it does mean that, sometime later this year, I’ll need to pass on the deputy leadership hat – did I get a hat? – to the next person.”

Ms. Jones, who was only elected as deputy leader in October last year, added: “I’m sorry that I won’t have worn it for longer, but you won’t have any difficulty in finding someone to wear it with considerable style.”

Speaking to the Impartial Reporter this week, the mother-of-three confirmed that she had been accepted to study for an LLM in Environmental Law at Dundee, on a course which lasts a year.

Ms. Jones revealed that her interest in the subject was sparked during the campaign against fracking in Fermanagh.

She said: “I’ve always been interested in law, having been a solicitor in England before moving over here, and I wrote a trilogy of comic novels in the 1990s featuring a solicitor in Yorkshire, published by Hodder Headline.

“My specific interest in environmental law grew as I was involved in the frackfree movement: I was the original legal coordinator for the Fermanagh Fracking Awareness Network and developed as I became involved in other campaigns, most recently Fossil Free NI.”

The green activist believes that the legal system will play an increasingly important part in protecting our health and environment, both globally, with the growing threat of “catastrophic” climate change, and locally, with the uncertainties of Brexit and Northern Ireland’s governance gap.

She added: “I’m hoping that my particular mixture of skills and experience will allow me to play a part in this work, though exactly what that part will be, I don’t know yet. Whatever it is, the course in Dundee will equip me well.”

Ms. Jones said she was “very fortunate” to have the opportunity to study with some of the leading experts in environmental law, and to have the support of her husband Martin and family and friends in taking this step.

“We haven’t yet worked out all the practical arrangements, but we think of Fermanagh as our home and it is this beautiful county which has inspired me more than anywhere else.”

Reflecting on her time as deputy leader, she said: “It’s been a wonderful chance for me to get to know more of our great and growing Green Party membership and to raise awareness of the issues I care most about, especially those which affect the rural west.”

Ms. Jones stood as a candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency in the past four elections: for Westminster in 2015 and 2017 and for Stormont in 2016 and 2017. She said: “We had never previously had a Green Party candidate other than at council level, and I was overwhelmed by the goodwill and interest shown by people in our constituency. I hope that by standing I have been able to raise some of the really important issues that affect us all and will impact on future generations more and more.

“I’m grateful to the local media for making our voice heard, a quiet voice of long term common sense amidst the clamour of confrontation. We’ve built a strong and resilient local constituency group, with wise, hard-working and visionary campaigners, and whatever I do personally, they will continue to work for a better, fairer and cleaner future.”