Irish Examiner view: Positive start made by ministers in the North
Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly at St Paul's GAA Club in Belfast. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
The new ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly have been out and about in the community, and the early signs are encouraging.
Last week, First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin attended a Northern Ireland women’s football game with Montenegro, which ended in a 1-1 draw. That game was played in Windsor Park, a venue which has not always been welcoming to nationalists in the North, but O’Neill not only took her seat for the game, she stood for ‘God Save The King’.
O’Neill was accompanied to the Windsor Park game by Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP. The two women had a different sport on the agenda earlier this week, when both visited St Paul’s GAA club in Belfast: Pengelly duly picked up a hurley and struck a sliotar well.
The two leaders are not the only politicians in the North reaching across the divide.
Education Minister and DUP MLA Paul Givan made his first visit to an Irish-language school earlier this week when he dropped into Gaelscoil Aodha Rua in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, and participated in céilí dancing with pupils.
The three are experienced politicians and O’Neill in particular seemed conscious of the potential pitfalls of such events.
“We are tasked with leadership together and we are determined to do that," she said. "Some might want to call that ‘gesture politics’ but, by and large, I think people find it a positive and welcome development.”
It is positive: Gesture politics are important in a place where imagery and symbols have long had a divisive power, and the gestures are a welcome start in diluting that divisiveness.
Those in Stormont have plenty of challenges ahead, ranging from the need to modernise the North's infrastructure to the serious ecological threat to Lough Neagh.
Those challenges will be easier to deal with if the communities involved are less divided, and last week was at least a positive sign for the future.
Fans of the old TV series had some appreciation of the size of US president Joe Biden’s task yesterday.
He gave his final state of the union address last night, a set-piece oration in which the president traditionally sets out his agenda and sounds a note of positivity about his own tenure. For a president looking to secure a second term in office, it’s an opportunity to show off a winning track record and to underline one’s credentials.
If successful, that is. The state of the union is, as West Wing devotees will recall, also a fraught occasion. In the run-up, multiple contributors edit and change the speech until the very last minute. That appears to be a reasonable representation of the facts, as it is reported that Biden spent the days preceding the event going through his text line by line, with aides and historians chipping in with revisions and amendments almost until the moment he stood up in Congress to speak.
It is fair to say that Biden’s performance in delivering the speech carried more political significance than many of his predecessors’. He turned 81 last November and there has been much discussion of his age and fitness for office if elected to a second term.
Significantly, his rival for the presidency is not playing on the age factor, and little wonder: Donald Trump will be 78 in June and seems uncharacteristically reluctant to attack Biden on that score (as a point of comparison, Bill Clinton, who was elected president 32 years ago, is still younger than both of this year’s candidates).
Trump has been far more visible than Biden in recent weeks as he tours America drumming up support, but in doing so he has made several gaffes, which have sparked discussions in turn about his own fitness for office.
Close observers of the American political scene have thus asked if Trump’s high public profile is backfiring as his errors mount.
The nightmare for Biden supporters is that voters may compare their candidate’s relative lack of visibility unfavourably with Trump’s willingness to campaign loudly, if a little erratically.
For all those reasons, this state of the union was one of the most important in years and may offer us some pointers as to the likely winner of the election this November.
Tributes have been paid to Saoírse Ruane, who has passed away at the age of 12 following a long battle with cancer.
Saoírse, from Athenry, Co Galway, first came to national attention in 2020, appearing on during the covid-19 pandemic and helping to launch the inaugural Toy Show Appeal.
To date, it has raised over €17.5m for children’s charities.
Lively and engaging, Saoírse’s interaction with host Ryan Tubridy caught the nation’s attention immediately.
In a tribute posted online yesterday, Mr Tubridy said: “She told her story, the nation fell in love with her, and a charity began because of her. With that, she helped enrich and encourage the lives of thousands of children in Ireland.”
He was joined in paying tribute by President Michael D Higgins and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the latter saying Saoírse “leaves behind an extraordinary legacy” in the Toy Show Appeal.
As the Ruane family tries to come to terms with this unimaginable loss, in time it may be some consolation to know that all of Ireland is thinking of them.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
