Education
Queen"s University Belfast.
Queen"s University Belfast.
Educated at Queen"s University, Belfast, where he served as President of the Students" Union, he later became a practising solicitor. He was a former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party Belfast City Council Group. In 1997, he participated in negotiations for the first Nationalist Mayor of Belfast, having failed to secure his own nomination for the post within his political grouping.
In 1997, he was appointed by John Hume to the Dublin Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
He was elected to Northern Ireland Assembly in June 1998. Attwood is the Social Democratic and Labour Party spokesperson on policing and has played a key role in negotiations on the Policing Bill.
He was appointed to the Northern Ireland Policing Board in September 2001. In May 2010, he succeeded Margaret Ritchie as Minister for Social Development.
In May 2011 he was appointed as Minister for Environment, succeeding Edwin Poots.
As Environment Minister, he has faced some opposition when trying to set up two national parks in Northern Ireland from the Ulster Farmer"s Union. The president of the UFU, Harry Sinclair, said: "We have consistently highlighted that there are genuine and deep-seated concerns from our members across a very wide range of issues particularly on the areas of bureaucracy, additional restrictions, governance, access, liability, and the impact on the social structure of these areas. These very real issues clearly remain.".
1st Northern Ireland Assembly. 2nd Northern Ireland Assembly. 3rd Northern Ireland Assembly.
4th Northern Ireland Assembly]
He is a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and represents Belfast West in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and is currently active on Twitter.
Attwood was a member of Belfast City Council for the Upper Falls, West Belfast from 1985 to 2001. Attwood was a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party Talks Team, playing a key negotiating role on policing, human rights and justice issues.
