Northern Ireland

The rift between the government and the EU has widened again, as Foreign Secretary Liz Truss published plans to unilaterally change the Northern Ireland Protocol.

We spoke to Democratic Unionist Party MP Sammy Wilson.

We spoke to Senator Lisa Chambers – the deputy leader of Ireland’s Upper House and the European and Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the governing party, Fianna Fáil.

We spoke to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and asked him about plans to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol just two years after his government agreed to it.

Boris Johnson has insisted he doesn’t want to scrap the Northern Ireland protocol but to fix it – and said that all the parties he met on his visit to Belfast today agreed it needed reform.

The DUP had threatened to stop the Northern Ireland Assembly functioning, in protest at the post-Brexit trading protocol, and today that came to pass. 

For the first time in 101 years, a nationalist party is in the majority in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin said the country was entering a “new era” as they overtook the DUP.

Immunity for crimes committed during the Northern Ireland Troubles will depend on people co-operating with the new reconciliation body set up by the Government.

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, has urged the leaders of the five party’s in the Stormont assembly to re-establish a ruling executive. 

Ireland’s foreign affairs minister has been hastily rushed off stage by police at an event in Belfast after a van was hijacked and driven to the venue. 

It’s estimated that more than three million Ukrainians have had to leave their country since the start of the war, seeking security elsewhere in Europe. 

In Northern Ireland there are fears that, as the cost of living crisis grows, as much as 40% of the population could soon be living in fuel poverty.

Five years ago a landmark inquiry concluded that over a 73-year period, children in Northern Ireland’s care homes suffered systemic physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect. 

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party has resigned in protest over Brexit checks in the Irish Sea. 

We spoke to the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. She is now chair of The Elders, a group of world leaders working for human rights, peace and the transition to a low-carbon future.