Organisers are calling on anybody in helping bring a Pride event to Fermanagh in 2020 to come along to a meeting on January 28.

The dust had barely settled on the annual Pride celebrations in Northern Ireland and around the world last July when interest was garnered to bring the celebration of LGBTQ+ people to the county for the first time ever.

Alliance representative Matthew Beaumont and Cross-Community Labour Alternative Councillor Donal O’Cofaigh came together to try and create Enniskillen Pride and a Facebook page was set up and the response has been very positive.

Councillor O’Cofaigh is now calling on those who want to see the celebration become a reality to attend the meeting and make themselves available to help organise the Pride event.

“We are having a meeting on Tuesday, January 28 in the Enniskillen Hotel at 7.30pm. Anyone of interest in organising the event is asked to attend and what we will do is we will form a committee to take it forward hopefully involving people who are interested in getting involved in it.

“I think it is more important than a bunch of politicians doing it that there are people that are actually interested.”

Councillor O’Cofaigh said the meeting is open to anyone who has ideas on how the event should be organised and give them the opportunity of shaping Enniskillen Pride rather than having politicians taking the lead in organising it.

“Anyone who wants to come along, the idea really is there are a variety of different political groups supporting it. And if we can form a committee I could see the role of the politicians as basically to support as opposed to taking the front row in it.

“I’ll certainly help people if they can come forward. We will see what comes out of the meeting and see what sort of interest there is.”

It is hoped that the interest and response since the initial idea was raised last year is still there with Councillor O’Cofaigh saying response on the Facebook page have been good. “I’ve had loads of people on the page which is one of the reasons we have been trying to identify a day. There is a lot of interest and people are asking how they can get involved and the best way to get involved is to come along, get into the committee and we’ll see how we can organise something here in the town,” he said.