The resumption of devolution in Northern Ireland – scheduled for tomorrow after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) reached a deal with the UK Government earlier this week – marks a big moment: for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland, there will be a nationalist First Minister.

Sinn Fein, a party still viewed by the security services as being in lockstep with the IRA, became the largest party at the 2022 Assembly Election. As a result, their leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, is entitled to be nominated as the Province’s First Minister. Irish nationalists and republicans are now masters of a state designed for their exclusion.

Sinn Fein has yet to apologise for the role it played in sustaining or prolonging the Troubles

There will no doubt be certain mirth that the daughter of an IRA prisoner is now ‘in charge’; this is despite the post of Deputy First Minister, set to be taken by the DUP, carrying identical, ‘co-equal powers’. But there is also a lesser spoken significance to the event, one which is being deliberately ignored by those fawning over the idea that a Sinn Fein representative as First Minister is a sign of progress.

It may be unfashionable to do so, but it bears repeating; the nationalist population has swung in behind the electoral vehicle associated with the Provisional IRA, which was responsible for half of all violent deaths during the Troubles.

Sinn Fein has yet to apologise for the role it played in sustaining or prolonging the Troubles. Indeed. O’Neill has previously said there was ‘no alternative’ to the violence which took place. Yet at every election in Northern Ireland since 2001, the majority of the nationalist electorate has endorsed Sinn Fein over alternatives, such as the SDLP. Unionism has seen no equivalent electoral success for a party which has such overt ties to a proscribed organisation.

O’Neill continues to stress she will be a ‘First Minister for all’. However, her continual struggles to say the words ‘Northern Ireland’, preferring to eschew the correct nomenclature in favour of ‘the North’, points somewhat to the hollowness of that pledge.

Whatever name it is given, Northern Ireland is in uncharted territory. This was demonstrated all too clearly by the news that O’Neill is now accepting protection from bodyguards provided by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Her decision to do so marks a break from Sinn Fein tradition; many of O’Neill’s party members still view outright hostility towards the police as an article of faith.

Surreal as it all is, this is a natural consequence of nationalists in Northern Ireland believing that their interests are best served by Sinn Fein. Barring a defiance of political gravity, it is unlikely that the SDLP – which now resembles a bellyaching South Belfast dinner party more than a political movement – can dislodge them.

Some nationalists will claim unionist discomfort about O’Neill becoming First Minister stems from an inculcated bigotry. This is something Sinn Fein suggests contributed to the length of time Stormont was dormant. Such an assertion is fatuous given what is now at hand.

Those same people will likely suggest that agonising over Sinn Fein’s history at this historic moment is an act of whataboutery or clinging onto the past. They will ask: can people not understand Sinn Fein as a progressive force with a leader set to be ‘First Minister for all’? Don’t be fooled. Sinn Fein is a party that has never atoned for its past – until it does so, it’s success can never be seen as a shining moment of reconciliation, tolerance and good neighbourliness.