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“Absolutely beautiful,” enthused Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s new first minister, hailing a “Peace Proms” concert by the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland last weekend. “A choir of over 2,500 children from all backgrounds across the island singing with one voice.”
The same cannot always be said of politicians in a region where conflicting identities and aspirations seem destined, sooner or later, to deliver discord. No sooner had Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-UK party dropped its two-year Brexit boycott of the power-sharing executive at Stormont this month than its leader and the region’s new deputy first minister were quietly taking linguistic liberties.
Assuming office, Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionist party said that, “as first ministers”, she and Michelle O’Neill of the nationalist Sinn Féin were making history. Two days later, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said Little-Pengelly would be a “very good first minister” and would help the “joint office of first minister” achieve a better future for people in Northern Ireland.
The two jobs are equal in law and can only function in tandem. But O’Neill holds the official title “first minister”. Rebranding it as joint first minister is a logical reform, and a committee at Westminster has endorsed that. But it is not yet agreed.
O’Neill wastes no opportunity to reinforce the fact that a republican is holding the post for the first time in a region designed over a century ago to have a permanent unionist majority. She pledges to be a “first minister for all” despite enduring political, community and identity divides that translate into different world views, often with different vocabularies.
The peace deal that ended three decades of conflict known as the Troubles is largely called the Belfast Agreement by unionists and the Good Friday Agreement by nationalists. The latter call the region’s second-largest city Derry; unionists call it Londonderry. O’Neill’s assertion that there was “no alternative” to republican violence during the Troubles stirs resentment, as does new UK legislation to grant amnesties for Troubles-era atrocities.
Still, the power-sharing executive has been on its best behaviour since Stormont’s resurrection. Ministers promise to unite behind delivering on the region’s pressing challenges, including enormous hospital waiting lists and crumbling infrastructure.
O’Neill and Little-Pengelly appear committed to a respectful working relationship. O’Neill was the first Sinn Féin politician to attend a graduation ceremony for the police, an institution the party long shunned. Little-Pengelly was in Dublin to cheer on the Ireland rugby team, which draws talent from both sides of the border.
But if communities interpret in different ways their shared history and future desires for Northern Ireland — either reuniting with the south or building a “new” Ireland, or remaining a part of the UK — navigating the present is just as tricky.
In the deal that persuaded the DUP to return to Stormont, the UK government trashed the “divided and misguided political notion of the all-island economy”. Within days, however, the Dublin government was berating a decades-long lack of “joined-up planning and investment” north and south and pledging to “build bridges, visible and invisible”, eased by investment of €800mn on shared infrastructure projects.
They include a contribution to redeveloping Casement Park, the home of Gaelic sports played largely by nationalists in Northern Ireland. Casement is due to be a venue for the Euro 2028 football tournament, hosted jointly by the UK and Ireland. But with costs ballooning, the project will get built only if funding from the Northern Ireland executive and UK government is far bigger than that previously granted to upgrade the region’s rugby and soccer stadiums — a prospect that raises the hackles of some unionists.
O’Neill insists the prize is “making sport something that can unify us all”, even as Little-Pengelly stresses the need for fiscal responsibility and the “fair” allocation of taxpayers’ money. In a divided region where politicians are trying to stay in tune, it is the biggest challenge yet to Stormont’s so far harmonious honeymoon.
