O’Neill’s ascent to the role is the latest sign of the increasing popularity across the island of her Sinn Fein party that now believe their ultimate dream of a united Ireland may be “within touching distance”.
The Sinn Féin vice-president is the first non-unionist politician – she succeeds eleven unionist leaders – to head up Stormont’s devolved government since their establishment more than a century ago.
O'Neill should have become first minister in May 2022 after Sinn Féin overtook the Democratic Unionist party in an assembly election. But the DUP boycotted power-sharing in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements, leaving Stormont mothballed until a deal on Tuesday with the government coaxed them back.
The Sinn Féin deputy leader will head an executive with a DUP deputy first minister who has equal power but less prestige and symbolic weight. The two parties, in coalition with Alliance and the Ulster Unionist party, inherit a fiscal crisis, crumbling public services, creaking infrastructure and widespread cynicism about Stormont’s capacity to fix things. Republicans will want progress towards unification, while unionists will want to anchor themselves in the UK.
[Additional notes: Sinn Féin were affiliated with the armed group, Irish Republican Army, during the so-called “Troubles”, a period of about 30 years of violent conflict over the future of Northern Ireland which ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
And O'Neill and Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald represent a shift to a new generation of Sinn Féin politicians not directly involved in the region's decades-long bloody conflict between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and pro-British unionists wanting to remain the United Kingdom].
Wasteful Celtic could only draw 1-1 against managerless Aberdeen in yesterday's Scottish Premiership match.
A steady stream of first-half chances and the former ought to have killed the game. It had been a sobering afternoon for the latter, as they became the first Premiership team this season to go a whole half without touching the ball in the opposition box. And yet, Celtic showed themselves to be profligate.
Within five minutes of the second half, Aberdeen scored with their first shot, their first shot on target and their first real attacking moment.
The Scottish champs evened the score when Nicolas Kuhn came off the bench to send a deflected strike past the Dons goalkeeper after being assisted by fellow winter signing Adam Idah.
That fortuitous leveler in the sixty-third minute allowed Celtic to wrestle back a point and move six points clear at the top.
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