(London) The new Northern Irish Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Fein) spoke on Sunday of a referendum on the unification of Ireland within the next 10 years, during an interview broadcast the day after her historic accession at the head of local government.
After two years of political paralysis, Michelle O’Neill, 47, became the first pro-unification politician to be appointed head of the Northern Irish government.
“My election as prime minister demonstrates the change that is happening on this island,” she said in an interview broadcast on Sky News on Sunday.
“We can have power sharing” between republicans and unionists committed to keeping Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, “we can make it stable, we can work together every day in terms of public services , and also pursue legitimate aspirations,” she said.
Asked whether she “anticipated a referendum on the unification of the island in the next 10 years”, the vice-president of Sinn Fein, formerly the political showcase of the IRA (Irish Republican Army), replied in the affirmative.
” Yes. I believe we are in a decade of opportunity”, “there are so many things that are changing the old norm, the nature of the state, the fact that a nationalist republican was never supposed to be prime minister” , continued Michelle O’Neill, “it’s all about this change.”
For its part, the British government “sees no realistic prospect” of such a referendum and believes that the future of Northern Ireland is “assured for the coming decades” within the United Kingdom, in a document published this week.
After her party’s victory in the May 2022 elections, the leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland found herself prevented from taking office, due to the boycott by the DUP unionists of the shared institutions, resulting from the agreement of the Good Friday in 1998, which ended three decades of conflict which left 3,500 dead.
The DUP denounced post-Brexit trade arrangements as a threat to Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, but this week concluded an agreement with the British government, although far from unanimous among unionists .