Irish Examiner view: One century, one big lesson

Sinn Fein leader  Mary Lou McDonald with Deputy Leader Michelle O’Neill.

One hundred years ago today, when the Government of Ireland Act was passed in the House of Commons, Northern Ireland was established. Any response to that centenary is inevitably loaded, especially among northern nationalists and their peers south of the border.

It is deeply ironic that any celebrations of that centenary run parallel to, after the peace, the most concerted cross-border co-operation in that century — the efforts to contain the pandemic. Belated and hotchpotch as they are they point to an undeniable logic (it’s called geography) even if the North’s main parties are so divided that the pandemic highlighted difference rather than a capacity to work together.