Just a generation ago, it would have been hard to imagine Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill and the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly working together as Northern Ireland’s two most powerful politicians.
Their fathers took up arms on opposing sides of an armed conflict that claimed more than 3,500 lives, during three bloody decades of the Troubles, but over the past week these two women have vowed to build a brighter future, side by side.
The pair made history last weekend when O’Neill, 47, became the province’s first republican first minister and Little-Pengelly, 44, became the first unionist deputy first minister, occupying the power sharing roles — with equal powers — set up in the wake of 1998’s Good Friday agreement.
Little-Pengelly opened her maiden speech to the
