Northern Ireland has recorded the first death of a patient who had Covid-19, the Department of Health has announced.

Doctors are attempting to contain the spread of the virus until the summer, when it will be easier for hard-pressed health services to manage and the infection could go dormant.

Hundreds of people have “stormed” Stormont to demand better mental health services in Northern Ireland.

Seamus Mallon, who will be buried in his beloved Markethill in South Armagh today, may not quite be numbered in that trinity of the greatest Irishmen of modern times.

They enjoyed a long, fruitful if occasionally fraught relationship. One concentrated on securing international support for their cause while the other — Mallon — concentrated on Belfast and Lon don, Dublin too.

Thursday was the third anniversary of Martin McGuinness’ decision to stand down as Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister and close that early chapter in the current, as yet unrealised, normalisation of that society, its relationships with its neighbours, and its neighbours’ relationship with it.

Jim Wells told RTÉ radio’s Today with Séan O’Rourke show that the people of Northern Ireland have no appetite for another election.

Boris Johnson’s election victory might have one positive impact. His 80-seat, five-year majority means the Tories are not dependent on the DUP and can insist, should they be so moved, that the bickering that has silenced Stormont for three years ends.

Since devolution in Northern Ireland collapsed in January 2017, things have been operating north of the border in a political limbo. That may be about to change.

Stormont, despite positive post-election noises, remains mothballed. Tribalism is re-energised.

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

Direct rule would need to be introduced in Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the British Government has confirmed.

Reading the text, the first impression is that there’s much more that hasn’t changed than has.

British prime minister Boris Johnson has just 24 hours to win enough MP support to drag the Brexit deal over the line — or face the prospect of the DUP tearing up the agreement just as it has been reached.

Crucially from an Irish perspective, the deal done in Brussels today removes the threat of a border on the island of Ireland.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said his preference is still to hold a general election next spring despite pressure mounting to go to the polls as a successful Brexit deal looms.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will “run as far away as possible from a domestic agenda” if a Brexit deal is agreed and he calls a snap general election.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney has warned the next 24 hours will make or break any hopes of a Brexit deal by this Thursday's EU summit as fears continue to grow that an agreement will fail to be reached this week.

More often than not, politics is the art of deliberately fogging up the view while claiming to have cleared the air.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said Boris Johnson's Brexit plans "fall short in a number of aspects".

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is set to warn British prime minister Boris Johnson the time for a last-ditch Brexit deal is “shrinking rapidly” when the two rivals meet in New York amid growing hard border fears.

Sinn Féin’s vice president has insisted there is no bad blood between her and the Stormont colleague vying for her job.

RTÉ last night broadcast the first of Olivia O’Leary’s two documentaries on Daniel O’Connell. When the programme-makers first considered the project, they could not have

The largest-ever Northern Ireland business delegation to travel to Westminster has vowed to press the case for the local economy next month.

Recent days brought the old questions about division back into a sharp focus.

To paraphrase an enduring British Conservative icon — there are such individuals — never in the field of political conflict were so many in thrall to so few.

Sara Canning will address a rally calling for change in Northern Ireland at Belfast City Hall tomorrow.

Patrick Kavanagh once described the Irish countryside in May, when the whitethorn was in full, magnificent bloom, as wearing its Communion dress.

Filling political vacuums, more talks at Stormont and calls for security crack-downs are all well and good but the most fitting tribute to the late Lyra McKee would be finally dealing with the underlying causes of her death, suggests Dolan O’Hagan.

Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Michelle O’Neill says that the people who killed journalist Lyra McKee in Derry last Thursday night are “no politicians, they have no strategy, no popular support from the people.”

Just over two years ago, when Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said it would be a mistake to allow the local crocodiles to hope that their well-honed appetites might be satisfied because, no matter how much they were given to eat, they would want more she revealed far more than she intended.

On Monday, a Dublin man became the fourth person to be convicted over the murder of dissident republican Peter Butterly.

A House of Commons vote this week on a bill that aims to lift the total ban on abortion in the North will have encouraged, but probably not surprised, campaigners who want to see the province’s Victorian-era prohibition abolished. The bill, supported by four Conservative government ministers, was backed by 208 MPs and opposed by 123.

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.

When a fiction-based resolution of a crisis starts to unravel it is not always easy to pinpoint the moment progress reverts to tribal retrenchment.