Power-sharing must emerge after Northern Ireland election — for all our sakes

Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill give off the signs of being able to work together, writes Fergus Finlay.

You may not have noticed, and I wouldn’t blame you, but there’s an election going on the island. In Northern Ireland to be exact, where a new Assembly is due to be put in place on March 2. That’s around three weeks from now.

I haven’t been in Northern Ireland since the Assembly was dissolved, so I can’t tell you whether the posters are even up yet. But as far as the media are concerned, something weird seems to be happening. I searched the pages of the main Northern Ireland newspapers over the weekend – the Belfast Telegraph, the Newsletter, the Irish News – and you’d be very hard pressed to discover there’s an election on at all.