05/30/2024

Northern Ireland Is Steeped in Its Past

Michelle O’Neill has a vision for its future

Michelle O’Neill was never supposed to be here. When the Northern Ireland Assembly was established following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of sectarian bloodshed known as “The Troubles,” it established a delicate system of power sharing.

Traditionally Protestant British unionists, who want to preserve Northern Ireland’s status within the U.K., and traditionally Catholic Irish nationalists, who aspire to reunify with the independent Republic of Ireland, would govern together. But even at the time of that historic compromise, no one imagined that a nationalist party could become the legislative body’s largest—or that anyone other than a unionist might one day hold its top office.

And yet here stands O'Neill, a 47-year-old Catholic woman and the first nationalist leader of Northern Ireland—a province she one day hopes to abolish. O’Neill, who is from a prominent Irish republican family, represents Sinn Féin, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—and tells TIME nothing about her political ascent was inevitable.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.