Voting is continuing in the final hour of this year’s General Election.

Former submariner Steve Aiken has been confirmed as the new Ulster Unionist Party leader.

It is not necessary to be a pessimist much less a fatalist to feel we are living through a moment of great change, a moment of great reversal.

It would be the first December British election in 100 years and there would be a five-week campaign by parties up to polling day.

“It is good that the meeting is taking place. The fact that he’s here is a good thing. It’s about time,” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Sean O’Rourke show.

Emergency financial measures to support Brexit-hit businesses and communities will form part of the budget, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has confirmed.

The device exploded close to Wattle Bridge at around 10.35am after bomb disposal experts had defused a larger device in the area.

Mr Varadkar's comments were jeered by a section of the crowd which had otherwise broadly welcomed him.

All 462 seats have now been filled, with the DUP coming out on top, despite securing fewer seats than in the last election.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney will travel to the North tomorrow for talks with the region’s main political parties amid growing pressure for them to form a new coalition government in the aftermath of Lyra McKee’s murder.

In a statement, they called for "calm heads" after Ms McKee who was shot dead during riots in Derry last night.

Here's your lunchtime bulletin.

Fine Gael has been accused of having a “poke in the eye of unionists” after the party’s outspoken support for the Brexit withdrawal deal.

We weren’t just ending the conflict, we were also putting in place arrangements to replace the Anglo-Irish Agreement, writes then junior minister Liz O’Donnell

Considered by many the cornerstone of peace and stability on the island of Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement and the path to it was fraught with hurdles and political landmines, writes Juno McEnroe.

The architects of the Good Friday Agreement have joined forces to urge British prime minister Theresa May to end her “aloof” approach to the North and help break the year-long political deadlock two decades on from the historic peace deal.

The Good Friday Agreement brought the framework for peace, but it hasn’t been an easy ride. Political Correspondent Fiachra Ó Cionnaith looks back on the key moments of the first 20 years of the peace process.

The principle of consent to constitutional change in Northern Ireland has been overlooked by the Irish Government, the Ulster Unionist Party leader said.

Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists are hammering out details of a potential deal that could end Stormont's 13 month powersharing crisis.

Senior Irish and UK government ministers have urged politicians to be careful about the language they use in the wake of the latest Twitter row between elected representatives in the North.

A referendum on an Irish Language Act should be held in the North this summer, three former Belfast Agreement negotiators have said.

DUP leader Arlene Foster has threatened to seek the appointment of “direct rule ministers” in Northern Ireland “early in the new year” unless the near year-long Stormont stalemate is brought to an end in the coming weeks.

Former Ulster Unionist deputy leader John Taylor has denied being racist after calling Ireland's Taoiseach 'the Indian'.

He was responding to Peter Hain's expected suggestion that Northern Ireland should be part of the same customs union and single market as the Republic of Ireland after Brexit.

A man caught up in a boating accident which claimed the life of a woman in Co Fermanagh has left hospital after treatment.

The Rev Ian Paisley favoured religious fundamentalists over his DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson during the first roundtable peace talks between the main parties in Northern Ireland, records disclosed.

Council staff or private contractors are to be permitted to remove bonfire materials from sites in Belfast.

The Ulster Unionist Party has been fined for failing to declare £12,000 of its spend on last year's Assembly election.

Political leaders in the North have until this afternoon to strike a deal as talks on restoring Stormont powersharing continue.

Incoming Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned the British government not to get “too close” to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) amid fears that the make-shift Westminster coalition could put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.

THE decision by British Prime Minister Theresa May, reached during a walking holiday in Wales, to set aside assurances that she would not call an early election, has turned out to be one of the most disastrous in modern European politics.

Polling is underway in the North as the British general election gets underway. It is the seventh time in three years voters in the North have cast a ballot.

Sinn Fein leader at Stormont, Michelle O'Neill and the Democratic Unionist Nigel Dodds repeatedly clashed in a heated televised election debate this evening.

The new UUP leader has dismissed calls for a single unionist party.

Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists are on course to reinforce their grip on power at Stormont, with the republican party closing the gap on their unionist rivals.

Counting has begun today in the snap election for Northern Ireland's devolved institutions.

The polls have closed in the North's snap Assembly election.

Update: Northern Ireland's political leaders have cast their ballots in the region's snap election.

Northern Ireland’s political leaders have traded angry words in the last televised debate of the Assembly election campaign.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has insisted a united Ireland clause must be included in any Brexit deal, effectively allowing Northern Ireland to immediately rejoin the EU if it votes to reunify with the Republic.

A political inferno around a green boiler scheme is to remove Arlene Foster from her once-seemingly unassailable job as Stormont First Minister. 

Grassroots Fine Gael councillors have insisted their views on the future of water charges must be given attention before any decision is taken on how to tackle the controversy.

Colum Eastwood has become the first serving leader of the SDLP party ever to address the Ulster Unionist Party conference.