by When Michelle O’Neill is sworn in as Northern Ireland’s prime minister, it will be a personal and ironic victory.
As a teenage mother, she was treated as if she had the “plague”, and cried, but she went on to promote Sinn Féin and is now on the verge of making history as the first national who was in charge of Northern Ireland – a state, in theory, she wants to abolish.
Few expect a republican thunderbolt when O’Neill takes up his post in Stormont’s gilded chamber on Saturday. She promised to be the first minister “for all”, unionists and nationalists, and to show respect for the royal family.
But the 47-year-old comes from an IRA family, defends the legitimacy of IRA violence, and pays tribute to IRA members who died during the Troubles. As she navigates the tension between these positions, she will prove her tenure leading executives who face enormous challenges after two years of political paralysis.
O’Neill should be prime minister in May 2022 after Sinn Féin defeated the Democratic Unionist party in an assembly election. But the DUP boycotted power sharing in protest over post-Brexit trade arrangements, leaving Stormont out of the picture until the government’s deal lured it this week.
Related: With Sinn Féin in the post of first minister, will the day of the Republicans finally come?
The deputy leader of Sinn Féin will lead an executive with a DUP deputy first minister who has equal power but does not have the same prestige. Both parties, in coalition with Alliance and the Ulster Unionist party, are facing a fiscal crisis, draining public services, creating infrastructure and widespread cynicism about Stormont’s ability to sort things out. Republicans will want to progress towards unification, and unionists will want to secure themselves in the United Kingdom.
Solomon and Machiavelli may have found such a job impossible, but O’Neill admitted that he has hope and desire to “work together with all parties to deliver the needs and aspirations of workers, families and businesses”.
Sexist jibes will not help. Since entering the public eye as minister and deputy first minister, O’Neill has had to express opinions about his appearance. “Beauty from a blood-soaked family,” declared the Daily Mail in 2017. “Glossy blonde hair. Bright lipstick. Curled eyelashes. Painted nails. Figure-hugging outfits. Michelle O’Neill was certainly not what we expected.”
When Arlene Foster was first minister of the DUP, she was pressed in an interview to sum up her Sinn Féin colleague in one word. “Blonde,” she replied.
If he was wounded, Ó Néill did not show it. Her public persona is that of an open, relaxed, down-to-earth politician who continues her work. Officials in Stormont say she is the same when the cameras aren’t rolling. “No air, easy going,” said one.
O’Neill’s background did not suggest that there will be recreation in the future in Washington, London and Brussels. Michelle Doris was born into a working-class family in Clonhoe, a village in County Tyrone. Her father, Brendan Doris, was a prisoner of the IRA and an uncle, Paul Doris, raised money for the group. Security forces shot two cousins, members of the IRA, one fatally.
When she was 15, she became pregnant and recalled being treated at school “like the plague”. At home she fell and sobbed. “I’ll never forget that experience and I thought, ‘No one will ever treat me like this again,'” she told the Irish Times in 2021.
The O’Neill family helped care for her baby daughter while she completed her A-levels and training as a welfare rights adviser. In 2005 she won a seat on the Dungannon borough council previously held by her father and went on to become the chaplain to Francie Molloy, a member of the Sinn Féin assembly, and Martin McGuinness, a leading figure in the party alongside Gerry Adams.
After being elected to Stormont in 2007, the party thwarted her more senior colleagues by appointing her agriculture minister in 2011, health minister in 2015 and deputy first minister in 2017 following McGuinness’s death.
“At first she was seen as a puppet for Adams and the boys,” said Shane Ross, a former Irish government minister and author of McDonald’s biography, using a euphemism for IRA soldiers suspected of influencing the behind the scene. “But she has grown. His authority is growing. She is certainly quite capable.”
O’Neill, now a grandmother, reached out to unionists by attending the coronation of King Charles and occasionally referring to “Northern Ireland” rather than “northern Ireland”. She also accepted the protection of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, a break with the Sinn Féin tradition of using republican criminal guards.
But she defends the IRA’s armed campaign leading up to the 1998 Good Friday agreement, saying there was “no other option”, and attends memorials for former members, including a large funeral in 2020 during Covid restrictions.
“It’s hypocritical to go and shake hands with famous people but not do the killing of innocent people who were just doing an honest day’s work,” said Roy Crawford, Ulster Unionist councilor for Fermanagh and Omagh district council . An IRA bomb killed his father, Ivan Crawford, a part-time Royal Ulster Constabulary officer, in 1987. “Justice has not been served. The killers are running free,” he said. “I’m just one of many.”
Still, the unionist expressed optimism about Stormont reform. “We are entering a new phase of history. We don’t know what the future holds for us. We hope it is something tangible and positive.”
