On the 9th of January 2017 the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended. That means that there has been no local government in Northern Ireland for over 2 years. This is a disgraceful betrayal of the Good Friday Agreement.

In an attempt, I assume, to put pressure on those involved to restore the local government, an announcement was made in September of last year that the £49,500 salaries of Northern Ireland Assembly members was to be cut by almost £14,000, starting with a £7,425 reduction in November and a further £6,187 cut three months later.

But there was no movement.

The major low point of the strife caused by the political vacuum was when journalist Lyra McKee was shot dead on 18 April 2019 while observing rioting in the Creggan area of Derry. A completely senseless waste of a young life.

Lyra’s funeral was attended by politicians from North and South.

Catholic priest Father Martin Magill received a standing ovation at the funeral service when he said the following: “”Why in God’s name does it take the death of a 29-year-old woman with her whole life in front of her to get to this point?”

I guess the more naive among is thought that things might start to move at this point. But they did not.

So the latest thing to happen in the absence of local government in NI is that the UK Government has decided to bring NI into line with the rest of the UK in terms of laws relating to both abortion and same sex marriage. The deadline to get the assembly and executive up and running again is October 21st.

Experts like Susan McKay tell us that this won’t happen, so it looks as if the new laws will come into effect in the new year. So for me this is the “silver lining” in the shameful fact that the assembly has been out of action for 2.5 years.

Lyra had wanted to marry her partner, Sara Canning. Sara describes it as “bittersweet” that same sex marriage seems to be coming to NI but Lyra won’t be there to see it.

Here is a video of Lyra speaking very eloquently in 2017 about LGBT issues: