As Michelle O’Neill walks in her home village of Clonoe, east Co Tyrone, there is not a person she passes who does not say hello or a driver who fails to wave from a passing car.
O’Neill greets them all in return. Eventually, The Irish Times inquires as to whether she has adopted her own special wave like Queen Elizabeth II’s?
“They do tease me about that,” she says with a laugh.
Clonoe is where the First Minister of Northern Ireland and Sinn Féin vice-president spent her formative years and where she still lives. As O’Neill shows us around, it is evident how her family, her village and her community have shaped the person she is and the politician she has become.
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“I’m Michelle who’s from this area. There’s no airs and graces, but sure, this is my home. This is where I feel comfortable.”
At the heart of this staunchly republican village is Clonoe O’Rahillys GAA club with modern pitches and a redeveloped clubhouse, which also houses the community centre.
A plaque commemorates its official opening by the then MP for the area and O’Neill’s “mentor”, Martin McGuinness, in November 1998.
Was she here that day? “Absolutely.”
She was “a young mummy, my child was four … it was, 1998, the Good Friday Agreement, such a moment of hope and opportunity for people, and the club being opened captured, in a very local way, that new beginning and that new hope”.
Outside, she shows off the Gaelscoil, the village’s business park and her favourite walking route along the canal path.
“This is part of my mindfulness, my relaxation, keeping myself right, going out walking with friends … get a bit of head space to talk about things that aren’t in the political sphere,” she says.
“Because we’re all human at the end of the day, even those of us in politics, so I like that – I need that, actually, to keep doing what I’m doing.”
She was born in Fermoy, Co Cork, in 1977. The family returned to nearby Coalisland when O’Neill was a baby, then to her father’s homeplace of Clonoe to a new row of bungalows her father helped build and where her mother, Kathleen, still lives.
In 1968, discrimination in the allocation of housing in east Tyrone helped spark the first civil rights march, from Coalisland to Dungannon.
“When we got the opportunity to move, my mummy didn’t believe my daddy, actually. She said to Daddy: ‘Brendan, we’re not the kind of people who can buy a home’ and he said: ‘Yes, we can’.”
O’Neill speaks warmly of a “good family life” with “strong role models around us”, including her mother who gave up work so Michelle could go back to school after she became pregnant at 16.
O’Neill has spoken previously about how she was prayed over by some at her Catholic grammar school, how she sat her GCSEs a few days after giving birth and then the “huge fuss” made about her returning for A-levels.
“It was difficult,” she says, but also says “I suppose it does make you more resilient” just as “being a young mummy shapes who you are, being responsible for this beautiful little being and wanting the world to be better for her”.
From an early age, O’Neill was aware she “grew up in a family, in a society, in a community that was discriminated against, that was treated with inequality on a day-to-day basis”.
There was “a lot of loss in the community, many moments when the British state killed local lads, local people, local people that weren’t much older than me … all those moments contribute to shaping who you are”.
Among them was her cousin, Tony Doris, one of three members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade who were on “active service” when they were shot dead in a SAS ambush in nearby Coagh in 1991.
O’Neill was 14. “It was horrendous for his immediate family, obviously, and all these things have lasting impacts, and that’s the same for every family that lost. My experience, unfortunately, was felt by far too many people.”
O’Neill’s father, Brendan Doris, was an IRA prisoner and local councillor. “He was such a community activist. He was a man who was very much wedded to his community, and I liked what he did. I liked how he helped people. So I suppose, maybe it was always organic that I would go down the route that I took in terms of going into politics.”
Even then, her goal was “Irish unity. I think partition failed my community, failed every community across the island”, she says.
“But I’m somebody who was gifted the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. I had just turned 21 and that gave me that precious gift of peace.
“It made me determined that I am going to go out and I’m going to work this because this is a democratic pathway towards the unification of this island and I am going to grab it. That’s really been my journey ever since.”
O’Neill joined Sinn Féin in her early teens. In 1998 she officially started working for the party. She was elected a councillor in 2005, then to Stormont in 2007.
A former minister for agriculture and then health, in 2017 she replaced McGuinness when he stood down as deputy first minister. Last year, she became First Minister, making history as the first nationalist to do so. As she walked down the grand staircase into the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings and then into the Chamber, she allowed herself a smile.
“There’s no doubt it was a moment of pride, personal pride, pride for my community, for my family,” she says.
“I suppose I felt the weight of the moment of history on my shoulders, I felt the expectation on my shoulders, but that in itself is a motivator.
“You know you have to go out and give it your 100 per cent and I hope that’s what people can see. I give it my 100 per cent every day.”
O’Neill’s maiden speech, delivered shortly afterwards, was about setting the tone for her term. She promised to be a “First Minister for all” and “inclusive and respectful” of everyone regardless of background or identity.
“I’ve fulfilled that pledge,” she says.
She lists examples, including her attendance at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and King Charles III’s coronation, a PSNI graduation and the official Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Belfast last November.
Was this difficult, given her own experience?
“Personally, given the experience of my community at the hands of the British state, then, yes, from that perspective it is.
“But is it the right thing to do to try and reconcile the people on this island? Yes, it is.
“So, for me, that outweighs any personal feeling.”
But equally she says: “I go to republican commemorations because that’s who I am. I’ve never shied away from that. I don’t distance myself from that.”
Can she understand why this is difficult for many, particularly those who lost loved ones to the IRA?
“I do think about it,” she says. “I understand there are many people out there that have a different narrative than me and I respect that that’s their view. It’s also perhaps their lived experience, but mine’s different.”
But, she says, part of reconciling is “actually understanding that it’s okay – we may have different narratives, but we need to respect that is actually the case.
“That understanding is what allows me to say what I can say – what I said whenever I became First Minister – because I absolutely am sorry that anybody lost a loved one. I’m so sorry we lived in a society that [had] a conflict.
“But the job of leadership of 2025, the job of leadership since the Good Friday Agreement, all of my life’s work, is about building on what was achieved then [in 1998] and continuing to drive us into the next 25 years.”
For O’Neill, this means a united Ireland. She stands by Sinn Féin’s aim of a Border poll by 2030, but is “less fixated on a date” for unity, “more interested in that the actual planning and preparation is done and that we get it right”.
She says: “The Irish Government really, really need to treat this with urgency … give people the tools in which to make an informed decision.”
How is this to be achieved, given that neither the Irish nor the British government – which must ultimately call the poll – have given any indication they intend to do so in the near future?
“Well, governments say many things … then they’re forced to take a position just because of the public demand for it. We will continue to make the case,” O’Neill says, arguing that even her own election as First Minister “speaks to the change that’s happening around us” and, coupled with potential of elections ahead, “all these things can become the tipping point for Irish unity”.
She believes there are “many people” – including unionists – “open to being persuaded … and they’ll be convinced because it’s in their best interests. The argument to be made is that there is something better for all of us”.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer will not, she says, have “the luxury of burying his head in the sand and ignoring the call for constitutional change”.
In the meantime, as the joint head – with the Deputy First Minister, the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly – of the four-party Northern Executive, there is much work to be done.
“Emma and I are completely different characters, completely different backgrounds, completely different outlook, but also very understanding of the fact that we have to work together to try and lead the Executive.”
Challenges facing Stormont include the crisis in the health service, the worst waiting lists on these islands, and a lack of funding almost across the board. Often, the public perception is that little practical is achieved amid much political point-scoring.
“There are lots of things we work on together and there are differences, but you have to manage those things. That’s just the nature of it.”
O’Neill is critical of the “lack of leadership in political unionism, particularly when it comes to issues of bonfires” and its “faux outrage at times around particular issues”.
“The constant attacks on the GAA tell people who support the GAA and people from an Irish national identity that they’re not welcome in this place. Political unionism would need to think about that.”
But O’Neill defends the Executive’s record: “We’re 18 months in … we have a programme for government, the first in over a decade. We’ve prioritised health waiting lists and we’ve put finances in that direction. We’ve been able to deal with public sector pay.” She also cites “a whole new economic strategy … advances on childcare, advances on a strategy to end violence against women and girls”.
On two major infrastructure projects, the rebuilding of Casement Park and the upgrade of the A5, she says they will be built. “I’ve said they’ll be built on my watch. I will stand over that.”
There is also the matter of the Irish presidential election. O’Neill bats away the names of any potential candidate – Mary Lou McDonald, Gerry Adams, her own – with the same response.
“The party is still deliberating. We’re actively having conversations. We’ve seen others enter into the field and we’ll make our position known very shortly.”
Will McDonald lead Sinn Féin into the next general election? “Absolutely”, she says.
Is O’Neill a future leader of her party? “Well, there’s no vacant position,” she says with a laugh.
One day? “I also love being vice-president … and working alongside Mary Lou. She’s described me before as her wing woman. That’s very much who I am.”
The role of First Minister “is my priority, and that’s where I need to be focused … I’m more than content with where I am”.
