A 10 year old girl has written to Stormont’s politicians pleading that they get power sharing back up and running to help her ill sister after her father Sean had to donate her a kidney.

Joanne Kelly, a pupil of St. Mary’s Mullymesker Primary School, has penned a personal letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill about the issues facing her sister Shannan and also her school.

“I am writing to tell you how much we need a Government,” writes Joanne, adding: “My sister was diagnosed with kidney failure… from that day on she has to beg for money from DLA services.”

“In school we have no copybooks, no glue sticks that actually stick, no text books, no ink for the printer, no play tie resources, very little reading books and no P.E. equipment.”

Joanne’s mother Siobhan Kelly says she was “flabbergasted” when she first heard about the letter.

“Joanne just came home and said, “Look mummy, I wrote this letter to the government.” I was flabbergasted because she shouldn’t know who they are. She should go to school without having to think about resources or who’s affected.

“She should be able to go to school and play like a normal child would,” Mrs. Kelly told The Impartial Reporter.

“Obviously in school they are having the conversation that because there is no established government there are no resources or way of putting resources into place. For Joanne, it was the lack of working glue sticks that was her problem, but it was everything, there aren’t even resources to play.

“We as a community fund as much as we can possibly fund and put that into the school but there is only so much that we can do so therefore it has affected Joanne and all of the children,” she said.

Joanne also writes about her sister Shannan who suffered from kidney failure at the age of 21.

Mrs. Kelly explained: “Shannan, at present, is just out of surgery for a re-insertion of her kidney transplant because she had been taking so many kidney infections.”

She continued: “Shannan had been taken off Disability Living Allowance (DLA) because she had ‘got better,’ as such, to them but she still couldn’t go back to work because when she did go to work, a fortnight later she was back in hospital again due to recurring infections.”

“Shannan has tried to live the last 12 months with very little money or help and basically she had to reapply for Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The body responsible for PIP told her three times that she wasn’t entitled to it and now she is in a tribunal with them. They have given her a date for a hearing, but she won’t be able to attend because she will be recovering from her surgery.”

“That has obviously impacted on Joanne too because she has heard us discussing that at home and it shouldn’t have to impact on her. We should have a service that we’re able to go with and not have to dispute,” she said.

Discussing the letter, Mrs. Kelly explains that it was Joanne’s own decision to write it. She said: “Joanne wanted to write the letter at home but I just had to be at the hospital with Shannan so she went to school the next day, pursuing the fact that she wanted to write it. She wrote the letter in school without any help. I asked her, ‘Who helped you write that Joanne’ and she said, ‘nobody.’ ‘DLA services’ was the only part of that letter that she asked the teacher for help.”

Joanne is the youngest of five children and Mrs. Kelly says that she is the first of her children to have ever spoken about the government.

She said: “How can no government affect a 10-year-old child that she felt that she needed to write this letter? Why did Joanne feel that she needed to write to them when it was never in an equation for her? Nobody forced her to do it, nobody asked her to do it, she just took it on herself.”