A quarter of a century ago, the civil war in Northern Ireland ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. At that time, Sinn Féin was still considered the political wing of the IRA. Today the party has a realistic chance of governing both Dublin and Belfast in two years’ time. Michelle O’Neill, who won the elections for Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland almost a year ago, is partly responsible for this change in image. A portrait of an extraordinary woman.
If you ask Michelle O’Neill, 46, what experience from the time of the Northern Irish Civil War shaped her personally, she does not say that her father was in prison during her childhood. Or how one of her cousins was shot dead by a British SAS commando and a second was badly injured by British police.