THE FIRST MINISTER of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill has said she will be raising the issue of a future referendum on Irish unity with the UK prime minister when she meets him, but has stressed the need for unity in the new assembly.

The Northern Ireland Executive returned to business today after nearly two years out of Stormont due to the DUP’s backlash against post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Following intense negotiations, the DUP agreed to return to powersharing this week in exchange for a number of changes to the trading agreements between the North and Great Britain.

After leading Sinn Féin in the 2022 election, where it took the most seats for the first time, O’Neill has made history today by becoming Stormont’s first nationalist First Minister.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One News, O’Neill said she would be raising issues around a border poll to vote for Irish unity with UK PM Rishi Sunak and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.

“I mean, that’s the beauty of the Good Friday Agreement. It’s only the people here that will decide whenever there’s going to be constitutional change,” she said.

“And when I talk about change here today, and I talk about the historical significance of the fact that I am actually now the First Minister, that speaks to actual… the kind of change is happening across the island.

“And I have always said for some time now that I believe we’re in a decade of opportunity, and I do believe that we will get the opportunity to have a referendum and when I meet Chris Heaton-Harris or Rishi Sunak as the British Prime Minister, I’ll make sure that message… he hears that very loud and clear.

It’s only the people here that will decide, but let’s do the two things at once. Let’s get into that building and actually deliver on the issues whilst also having those conversations.

O’Neill also stressed the historical importance of her new role, and what it would mean people of her mother’s and grandmother’s generation.

“The Northern State was built in such a way with an inbuilt Unionist majority. An Irish nationalist was never supposed to come to the fore, certainly never supposed to hold the position of First Minister,” she said.

So it’s a huge day because people from my parents’, my grandparents’, generation never thought a day like this would come.

So I think that’s why it’s so significant and why it means so much to the people and also speaks to the changes happening right across Ireland right now.

‘More that unites us’

O’Neill also said that despite having sharp differences in views over the future of Northern Ireland between the DUP and Sinn Féin, there was “far more that unites us than actually divides us”.

“We might have very different positions in terms of the constitutional future. And that’s okay, we can do two things at once. We can advocate, I – as an Irish republican – for constitutional change here on the island.

And from a unionist perspective they’ll advocate wanting to be part of Britain. And that’s okay, but let’s to do that alongside sharing power together in this building and actually getting down to the bread and butter issues of health and housing and education. 

O’Neill said she was keen to start as soon as possible and deal with the budget crisis affecting public services in the North. The UK government has offered a £3.3 billion package to secure Northern Ireland’s finances, including £600 million for settling public sector pay claims. 

“So on the face of it, it does sound like a big pot of money, but it is not, because from the Tories having been in power for 13 years now, they have starved public services here much needed funding,” she said.

“So everything they’ve taken away they haven’t even tried to replace. So I would make the case very clearly to the British government. Before Christmas, they put this money on the table. In doing so they recognise that we’re funded below need that makes it very difficult to do public services here.

The number one priority for all the executive parties who have now committed to working together is to actually make that case for a proper funding model model so that we can do good public services here.

That’s at the heart of the problem of being able to do the things that we need to do here in terms of transforming our health service, delivering for purpose education systems, we need to fight this fight together. And I made that very clear in my speech today.

O’Neill conceded that there may be problems up ahead, particularly in relation to the deal struck between the DUP the the British government, which will could see a review initiated on future trading arrangements if they don’t secure unionist buy-in. 

“I mean, I think that there could be problems ahead, but this is day one,” she said.

So I’m going to come up with the right attitude we need to make this work, we need to make powersharing work.