Like so many others who joined the congregation at St Anne’s for the celebration of Lyra McKee’s tragically shortened life,I found myself pondering on the events of yesterday as well as the realities of this new day. For Lyra’s family and her partner Sara, who carried their grief with such dignity, there will be the…

    That young face on the front page of every newspaper is a grim reminder – the confirmation of our unfinished peace and of a distance still to travel. I didn’t know Lyra McKee but, in my reading of the past couple of days,I know more about her now. She was just 29 –…

    The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government,…

  Lyra McKee – a journalist, aged 29. Another name to add to the long list of victims, who had to die all too soon to allegedly justify a particular ideology – and to those who planned the act and to whoever pulled the trigger – the correct ideology. On this day of all days,…

  Twenty-five years after the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994, it now looks like a legacy war – a recasting of the conflict period on a different stage. The Northern Ireland Office has now completed its assessment of the responses to its legacy consultation; the process in which people were asked for their thoughts…

  The Ulster Scots expression ‘scunnered’ sums up my mood over the horrendous handling by the Prime Minister in getting us out of the E.U.  Yet remarkably Brexit has done us all here a massive favour in removing sectarianism from our local political cockpit. No sectarian headcounts. No more Protestant versus  Roman Catholic diatribe. Alternatively…

  In life as in politics it is rare that one gets to venture outside the norms of our existence; and in segregated Belfast this means getting to mix in genuinely socially, politically and culturally diverse environments. When these rare moments arise it is best to grab them and make the most of them. Thus…

  It will not be said out loudly or with attribution and it might even be denied, but there are republicans who know the damage and the mistake of Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald’s comments on policing on Monday. Not what she said about the PSNI having zero credibility on matters pertaining to legacy; …

  At the end of January, a group of concerned nationalists held a one day conference at the Waterfront entitled “Beyond Brexit”, and I suppose in normal times the title was a fair call being but two months from the Brexit date of 29/3/19, but these are not normal times and….timing is everything. The content…

  The irony is not lost on unionists watching the machinations of those who vigorously opposed from a republican standpoint the Belfast Agreement now using it against Brexit and abusing it in furtherance of a border poll. Such are the bitter sweet complexities of republican nationalism which unionism find incomprehensible. From an unashamed unionist perspective…

  There is nothing certain about the future of the political institutions at Stormont. They may or may not be restored. What makes the task all the more difficult are the events of this weekend a year ago and what followed over the next few days through to February 14th. On this weekend in 2018,…

  Chief Constable George Hamilton’s tweet just after noon on Monday January 28th was, to say the least, something of a surprise. At 51, it announced his retirement plans by the end of June this year; five years after his appointment to the most-senior rank in the PSNI. Just days earlier, at a meeting on…

  A few weeks ago, in the festive period, the UK Home Office cheerily tweeted out that “EU citizens and their families will need to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to continue living in the UK after 31 December 2020.” This causally implies that all EU citizens, including Irish citizens who are resident in…

  Fact! Leo Varadkar invented the border backstop after and not before or during the U.K. vote on the E.U. referendum. If not removed by the E.U. it will be seen as a deliberate provocative ploy to disrespect the British. It can only be a short time before a backlash of retaliation reverberates across the…

    Given the range of preferences within the electorate and the House of Commons, the numerical weakness of the government and the priorities in Brussels, agreeing a deal between the EU and the UK following the outcome of the referendum was always going to be difficult. The situation did not need the constitutional clutter…