Because it had the most unionist seats in the 2022 elections, the D.U.P. had the right to nominate the deputy first minister on Saturday — Emma Little-Pengelly, who will work alongside Ms. O’Neill.
“The past with all of its horrors can never be forgotten,” Ms. Little-Pengelly said as she described being a child during the Troubles and seeing the devastation of an I.R.A. bomb outside her house when she was 11. But she added, “While we are shaped by the past, we are not defined by it.”
The first and deputy first minister roles are officially equal, with neither able to act alone, to prevent either community from dominating the other. As the top executives in the devolved government, they make decisions on health care, social services, education and other issues for the region.
“People like to say here, one can’t order paper clips without the approval of the other,” Ms. Hayward said. But the titles, and the fact that the first minister’s role reflects the largest number of seats, creates a “first among equals” notion.
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In some ways, the growth of nationalist political representation is unsurprising. Demographics have shifted significantly in Northern Ireland, with the Protestant majority’s slow erosion there first attributed to the Catholic Church’s opposition to birth control and then to economic factors like the decline in industrial jobs, which were held predominantly by Protestants.
Catholics outnumbered Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time in 2022, according to census figures. And Northern Ireland is not the binary society it once was. Decades of peace drew newcomers in, and like much of the world, the island has grown increasingly secular. The labels of Catholic and Protestant have been left as a clumsy shorthand for the cultural and political divide.
A large percentage of the population identifies as neither religion. And when it comes to political attitudes, the largest single group — 38 percent — regards itself as neither nationalist nor unionist, according to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey.
Since Brexit, there has been a fall in support for Northern Ireland’s remaining in the United Kingdom and a rise in support for Irish unification. Many voters saw the break from Europe as economically damaging and threatening to cross-border relations, as the island had enjoyed decades where E.U. membership helped shore up peace.
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