SINN Féin’s Michelle O’Neill has said that Ireland is living in “the end days of partition” while renewing her call for a border poll by 2030.
Attending her first republican Easter commemoration in Northern Ireland since becoming First Minister, Ms O’Neill made the comments on Saturday to a crowd at the republican plot for St Mary and St Joseph’s in Coalisland graveyard.
Honouring “the sacrifices that were made by those during Easter week of 1916” as well as “every generation before and since,” she said: ”Ordinary people born in extraordinary times and today we’re very mindful and thoughtful of all the families of those that have lost and we’re particularly thinking of you all today.
“Everybody has a right to respectfully remember their dead.”
Stating that republicans were witnessing “a pivotal moment in history” and that a border poll should be held by the end of the decade, she also told the crowd: “We are living in the end days of partition.”
On Sunday, Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald is also due to address an event in Carrickmore, Co Tyrone.
Sinn Féin’s Donegal TD, Pearse Doherty, will address the main Belfast commemoration while his Dáil colleague Eóin Ó Broin will be the main speaker at an event in Ardoyne.
Seanad member and former Stormont economy minister, Conor Murphy, will speak at Church Square Main in Monaghan town, while South Down MP Chris Hazzard is scheduled to address the annual Dundalk commemoration and North Belfast MP John Finucane will speak at Arbour Hill in Dublin.
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