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The confirmation of Michelle O’Neill as first minister of Northern Ireland is historic.
She is the first representative of the nationalist community, committed to uniting Ireland, to become the leader of the Stormont Assembly, an integral part of the devolved United Kingdom.
Ms O’Neill is also complemented in the south by another woman, Mary Lou McDonald, the president of their party, Sinn Fein, and the leader of the opposition in the Irish parliament.
As polls stand Ms McDonald is on course to be the first woman prime minister of Ireland.
The two leaders often appear together and were pictured on newspaper front pages after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lifted its block on re-establishing the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
Asked about a united Ireland Ms McDonald sounded confident. “In historic terms, it is within touching distance,” she told reporters.
Is she right though? Not according to the Westminster government. The 76-page document enshrining the deal with the DUP which MPs endorsed is called Safeguarding the Union and is shot through with language affirming Northern Ireland’s constitutional status as part of the UK.
Ms O’Neill and Ms McDonald clearly have electoral appeal.
Both women grew up in the Catholic community in republican families. Ms O’Neill’s father, Brendan Doris, was interned as a provisional IRA prisoner and served as a Sinn Fein councillor.
Middle-class Ms McDonald’s credentials are more remote: her great uncle, James O’Connor, an IRA member, was executed by the British during the Irish Civil War. That is ancient history, Ms O’Neill and Ms McDonald would have us believe.
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