“It represents truly historic change in the north and across the island of Ireland,” she said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Calling it a “good day for democracy,” O’Neill noted that the restoration of government “respects the result” of the May 2022 election — when Sinn Féin for the first time won the largest share of seats in the assembly and the right to hold the first minister job under Northern Ireland’s delicate power-sharing agreement.
But O’Neill also emphasized that she will be “a First Minister for All” — that means unionists and republicans, Protestants and Catholics, those who want a “United Ireland” and those who want to remain “British Forever” (alongside a growing number in the middle ground).
Earlier this week, Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin president and leader of the opposition in the Republic of Ireland, declared that Irish unity was “within touching distance.”
O’Neill seems to be staying away from language like that this week, and experts say the prospect of a united Ireland remains some way off, more a medium-term project than imminent.
But there is no doubt that the political landscape of Northern Ireland is changing.
For decades, the unionists have held the greater share of the power here — proudly declaring Northern Ireland’s status as one of the four nations of the United Kingdom, alongside England, Scotland and Wales.
It was the unionists who boycotted the government for these past two years. Overtly, their gripe was with post-Brexit trade arrangements. But many people suspected they also didn’t want to accept Sinn Féin playing a more dominant role.
And so, for the past 730 days, there wasn’t a functioning government at the Stormont estate, the seat of power in Northern Ireland. No executive, no assembly — though lawmakers continued to draw two-thirds of their salaries.
The gift shop and the cafeteria remained open. Schoolchildren visited. But unelected civil servants were left to keep the lights on, while avoiding any major decisions.
A breakthrough came earlier this week, when Jeffrey Donaldson announced that his Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had struck a deal with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government to tweak some of the trade and customs arrangements for goods crossing the Irish Sea.
The changes are described by Brexit experts as minor but important to the unionists, who have argued that requiring checks and customs declarations drives a wedge between Great Britain and Northern Ireland while drawing the north deeper into an all-Ireland economy.
Trade wasn’t a problem when Britain and the Republic of Ireland were both part of the European Union’s Common Market. But with Brexit, negotiators had to find a way to protect the integrity of the E.U.’s market without creating a visible border on the island of Ireland that could undermine the Good Friday peace agreement that ended 30 years of sectarian and state violence known as “the Troubles.”
Donaldson claimed a win with this week’s trade adjustments, saying they would “safeguard our place within the Union.”
The Good Friday agreement — brokered in part by the United States — ushered in the modern age of devolved power sharing in Northern Ireland. There is no winner-take-all here today.
Officially, there will be no difference in power between O’Neill and the…
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