The foreword to the document on proposals for Stormont reform, ‘Building Better Politics/Ag Tógáil Polaitíochta Feabhsaithe’, by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.
In May, 2026, we witnessed seismic elections results across Scotland and Wales. We now have three pro-independence First Ministers – here in the north of Ireland, in Scotland and in Wales.
Constitutional change is very much on the political agenda. Partition has failed all of the people of this island.
While our Assembly and Ministerial team continue to do all they can to deliver for ordinary people in the here and now, Sinn Féin believes that the best option for all the people of this island is a new, united Ireland within the European Union.
The constitutional referendum set out in the Good Friday Agreement needs to happen. In cooperation and partnership with the pro-independence movements in Wales and Scotland, Sinn Féin will continue to make the realisation of that referendum a political priority in the time ahead – while also working day-in and day-out to deliver for communities, families and workers.
Delivering for people in the here and now is of course a challenge, given the unusual political structure that exists in the north of Ireland. Delivery is frustratingly slow. I understand and share that frustration. We have to do things better.
Reform of the political institutions is clearly necessary but it will, unfortunately, not resolve the fundamental problem that some parties remain opposed to power-sharing, to equality and to the principles of the Good Friday Agreement.
Reform cannot address the fundamental difficulty of underfunding and an austerity agenda imposed on us from Westmininster. But we can improve the operation of our political institutions to deliver better. As a result of the inbuilt veto over Ministerial appointments by the two biggest parties, the Executive has faced repeated collapse with progress and day-to-day government frustrated. It is our view that this is a fundamental flaw that should be addressed. Given our difficult past and our divided politics, power-sharing must, of course, be maintained and resolutely defended.
Power-sharing is a core principle of the Good Friday Agreement, but the veto over the operation of the political institutions is a corruption of that principle. The work of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee (AERC) is the established and appropriate vehicle for addressing these important issues. The Sinn Féin members of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee are fully engaged in this essential work and will engage positively on proposals, views and suggestion for properly considered and researched reform that are meaningful and effective. And, crucially, proposed reform must protect the fundamental principles of power sharing and the Good Friday Agreement.
Sinn Féin are now bringing forward important and consequential reforms, reforms that will ensure the Assembly and the Executive can continue to function even in the context of political or economic crises.
Crucially, we propose no single party should have the power to block or collapse the Assembly.
In this document, Sinn Féin has identified changes that would have an immediate stabilising and normalising impact. We are not ruling out other proposals. In fact, Sinn Féin is very open to working constructively with other parties to advance these and other credible and effective proposals that can improve the operation and effectiveness of our political institutions.
O’Sullivans in West Cork break Guinness World Record with huge clan gathering.
The June Bank Holiday reunion in Castletownbere drew O’Sullivans from around the world and set a new Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people sharing the same surname.
Jun 03, 2026
Sullivans united at Guinness World Record event in Cork.Sullivans united at Guinness World Record event in Cork.
More than 1,800 O’Sullivans and Sullivans gathered in Castletownbere over the June Bank Holiday weekend, turning a long-planned clan reunion into a new Guinness World Records title. The West Cork crowd surpassed the previous mark of 1,488, set by the Gallaghers in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, in 2007.
The long-awaited event brought the O’Sullivan name back to the Beara Peninsula, which organizers describe as the ancestral home of the O’Sullivan Beare clan. What began as a world record attempt became a wider celebration of family, history, and place.
Before the final count, participants were asked to prove their connection to the surname with identification at Beara Community School and were then issued numbered cards for the tally. Guinness officials later confirmed a final total of 1,848 after more than 3,000 people had registered, with poor weather keeping some away.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Pravel Patel broke the great news from a podium on the pitch, declaring: “The current record stands at 1,488 so with a total of 1,848, you are the Guinness record title holders for the largest gathering of people with the same surname. Congratulations, you are all officially amazing.”
Organizer Jim O’Sullivan said, “It was an achievement to get people down here from all over Ireland because we are peripheral, but got people from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and America too, so we’re very happy.
“We made it – I don’t know how long we’ll hang on to the record – we’ll get a week out of it anyway I suppose,” he told the Irish Times.
“Somebody else might take it on next year so we might have to come back and do it all again next year but we’ll enjoy the record for the moment, for sure.”
Fianna Fáil’s for Cork South West Christopher O’Sullivan expressed his pride at breaking the world record. He told the Irish Independent, “Very proud to be an O’Sullivan. Thank you to all the Ó’Shuileabháns, Ní Shúileabháns, Sullivans and O’Sullivans who made the world record possible. Huge gratitude also to the organizers. The O’Sullivan motto is ‘we stick together’. In Castletownbere it really felt like being part of one big family.”
Independent councillor Finbarr Harrington spoke about the O’Sullivans/Sullivans rich history in the Beara Peninsula.
He said “Their story is one of resilience, leadership, and a strong connection to a place, with the legacy of the O’Sullivan/Sullivan clan continuing to inspire pride both at home and across the world.”
“Breaking a world record that had been held by the Gallaghers since 2007 is an extraordinary accomplishment. It was a memorable day that will be remembered for many years to come. The gathering is a fitting tribute to the strength of family ties, the importance of heritage, and the lasting bond that unites O’Sullivans and Sullivans wherever they may live,” he added.
The weekend had been billed as more than a record bid, with lectures, guided tours, music, Irish dance, pub gatherings, and a time capsule ceremony all part of the program. IrishCentral reported ahead of the event that celebrations would also include family-friendly activities across the peninsula, and official tourism listings described the gathering as a homecoming for the clan.
In 1996, Frank McCourt, a retired high school English teacher who was born in Brooklyn but raised in Limerick, became a literary sensation with the publication of his memoir, “Angela’s Ashes.” The book begins with these lines: “My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland…”
The year before “Angela’s Ashes” was published, Brendan Loonam, a high school English teacher who was born in Banagher, Co. Offaly, but raised in the Bronx, made his literary debut when the late, lamented Thomas Davis Irish Players produced his autobiographical play, “Gone Away with a Sailor.” The play begins with these lines: “I was on my second ramble through Jane Eyre, languishing, you might say, when I got the word about the job.” The allusion to a novel whose plot includes a marriage that began happily on one side of the Atlantic before descending into rancor and madness on the other side subtly, almost imperceptibly, foreshadows the tale to come. For the theme of Loonam’s play could be summarized by inverting McCourt’s opening lines: Loonam’s mother and father should have stayed in Ireland where they met and married and where the playwright was born. Instead they emigrated to America.
No other work of Irish-American literature I know uses the painful process of chain migration as its dramatic core. Through a lyrical set of intertwined monologues of the mother (“She”) and father (“He”), the play narrates the Larkin family gradually disintegrating and struggling to regenerate itself in the new environs of the Bronx. This narrative reveals the terrible costs of a particular piecemeal approach to emigration: first to depart are the father, Tom, and the oldest son, Sean; then the only daughter, Annie; then the next son, Peter; then the next son, Tosh; and finally, the mother, Kitty, and the youngest son, Kieran.
Both Loonam’s play and McCourt’s book end in New York. In “Angela’s Ashes,” that ending is framed as Frank’s escape from the poverty of Limerick and the dysfunction of his own family; he has returned to the promised land of America, a birthright his parent’s reverse immigration stole from him. As such, “Angela’s Ashes” is ultimately a comedy, whereas “Gone Away with Sailor” offer the audience no such happy ending. In his penultimate lines, He/ the father/ Tom Larkin confesses: “Sure what’s the use? The bed could be as wide as the Atlantic Ocean for all the space that’s between us now, and there’s no boat I’ve ever seen that could cross it.” Following this, in one of the plays most touching lines, She/the mother/Kitty explains to Kieran: “We started down a wrong road; a long time ago, for all the right reasons, and, sure, we’re stuck on it now and we have to make the best of it.” Clearly, the audience has witnessed a kind of tragedy unfold.
The Iago-like villain of this tragic plot is the unseen but constantly discussed Babby, the sister of He who sets the whole painful process in motion. At first, her actions call to mind the well-meaning Aunt Lizzie from Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia Here I Come!” –the yank aunt trying to do right for her kin left behind in backward Ireland. But as the story progresses, Babby spins scheme after scheme, becoming ever more controlling, constantly whispering counterproductive advice into the ear of her brother, who, under her tutelage, becomes a dour disciplinarian obsessed with reputation and respectability, more sinning than sinned against for sure.
Last Thursday and Friday evening the Amateur Comedy Club, under the able direction and elegant set design of Stephen Butler (no relation to the author of this review!), presented a staged reading that brought this tragic play back to life on the New York stage for the first time in 30 years. Jeannie Dalton as “She” epitomized the full emotional range of a dutiful wife and loving mother struggling and suffering to hold a family together. And Kevin Gregory as “He” embodied the stiff, awkward carriage of a tall man whose stubborn pride and small, suspicious mind wreck the family’s chances of a happy reunion. This performance was all the more poignant given that Brendan Loonam was not there to witness it, having passed in 2019.
Though much less well-known and more compact in form than “Angela’s Ashes,” “Gone Away with a Sailor” is just as powerful a work of art. A dramatic rendering of one family’s resilience in the face of rupture, it offers important insights into the emotional toll of emigration, family separation and reunification. It can help us to think more about the complicated relationships at the root of our own Irish family trees. It could also help us to think more about the experiences of friends and neighbors whose families may have journeyed from other countries to America under similar patterns of chain migration.
For all these reasons, one can only hope that this two-night table reading is just the beginning of the play’s renaissance.
February 5th: In a statement republican prisoners warned there could be further hunger strikes unless they were awarded special category status by the British government.
March 1st: Bobby Sands, the Commanding Officer of IRA prisoners in the Long Kesh/Maze Prison, refused food and so began a new hunger strike.
March 2nd: Republican prisoners call off the blanket and no wash protests as to not detract attention away from the hunger strike.
March 3rd: Then Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins reads a statement in the House of Commons reiterating their would be no political status for the prisoners, hunger strike or not.
March 5th: Frank Maguire, the Independent MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone died suddenly.
March 15th: Francis Hughes joined Sands on hunger strike.
March 22nd: Raymond McCreesh joined the hunger strike.
March 26th: Sands was nominated as a candidate for the by-election in Fermanagh/South Tyrone. Other nationalist candidates will withdraw their applications for candidacy in the following days.
April 9th: Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone following a final count on April 11th. Sands obtained 30,492 votes and Harry West, the Unionist candidate, obtained 29,046 votes.
April 20th: Three TDs visit Sands in the prison, after which the TDs called for urgent talks with the British government.
April 21st: At a press conference in Saudi Arabia, prime minister Margaret Thatcher declared the British government would not meet the three TDs. Further, she stated: “We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political.”
April 23rd: Marcella Sands, Bobby’s sister, made an application to the European Commission on Human Rights, claiming the British government violated articles of the European Convention on Human Rights with their treatment of republican prisoners.
April 28th: A private secretary of Pope John Paul II, Fr John Magee (later Bishop of Cloyne), visited Sands in prison to ask him to end his strike. The next day, Magee met Humphrey Atkins in an effort to create negotiations between the British government and the hunger strikers, before seeing Sands again. Magee also gave Sands a gold cross as a gift from the Pope.
May 4th: European Commission on Human Rights announced it had no power to proceed with the case brought by Marcella Sands against the British government.
May 5th: Bobby Sands died after 66 days on hunger strike. He was 27 years old.
May 7th: An estimated 100,000 people attended Sands’ funeral in Belfast.
May 8th: Joe McConnell joined the hunger strike to replace Sands.
May 12th: Francis Hughes died after 59 days on hunger strike. He was 25 years old.
May 14th: Brendan McLaughlin joined the hunger strike to replace Hughes.
May 21st: Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara died after 61 days on hunger strike. They were 24 and 23 years old respectively. Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, criticised the British government’s attitude toward the strike.
May 22nd: Kieran Doherty joined the hunger strike.
May 26th: McLaughlin, who had joined the strike 12 days before, is taken off the strike after he experiences internal bleeding.
May 28th: Martin Hurson joined the hunger strike to replace McLaughlin. Thatcher visited Northern Ireland and called the strike the “last card” of the IRA.
May 29th: The names of four hunger strikers, as well as five other republican prisoners, were put forward as candidates in the Irish general election.
June 3rd: The Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP) issued a statement on the hunger strike. The organisation, established by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, asked for improvements in the prisons but denied political status.
June 8th: Tom McElwee joined the hunger strike.
June 11th: Ireland held a general election. Hunger striker Kieran Doherty was elected as an Anti H-Block TD for Cavan–Monaghan, and fellow prisoner Paddy Agnew was elected in Louth, ddenying Charles Haughey the chance to form a government, and enabling Fine Gael and Labour to form a government with Garret FitzGerald as taoiseach. The following day the British government published proposals to change the Representation of the People Act, disallowing prisoners to stand as candidates in elections.
June 15th: Sinn Féin issued a statement declaring a new prisoner would join the hunger strike each week. Paddy Quinn joined the hunger strike.
June 22nd: Michael Devine joined the hunger strike.
June 29th: Laurence McKeown joined the hunger strike. The following day the British government released a statement declaring once again that it would not grant special category status to republican prisoners.
July 4th: The hunger strikers released a statement
July 5th: A deal was possibly on the table between Sinn Féin and the British government, giving the hunger strikers most of their demands. Sinn Féin rejected this deal. However, this is contested. Controversy surrounds this event, as some republicans claimed to have a document from the British government setting out proposals to meet many of these demands.
July 8th: Joe McDonnell died after 61 days on hunger strike. He was 30 years old. The following day Patrick McGeown joined the hunger strike to replace McDonnell.
July 10th: Funeral of Joe McDonnell took place. The British government moved to arrest an IRA firing party at the funeral and seized a number of weapons. Rioting ensued.
July 13th: Martin Hurson died after 46 days on hunger strike. He was 29 years old. The following day Matt Devlin joined the hunger strike to replace Huston.
July 15th: Secretary of state Humphrey Atkins announced that the British government had invited representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to review prison conditions in Northern Ireland. Over the following days the representatives toured the prisons and met Atkins. The hunger strikers rejected attempts by the Red Cross to act as mediators between them and the British government.
July 18th: Clashes with republican demonstrators and gardaí following a demonstration outside the British embassy in Dublin. An estimated 200 people were injured.
July 29th: Representatives of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) visited the hunger strikers, with the political groups suggesting the hunger strikers suspend their efforts for three months to allow a review of prison reforms. The strikers rejected this idea.
July 31st: The parents of Paddy Quinn asked for medical intervention to stop their son’s strike.
August 1st: Kevin Lynch died after 71 days on hunger strike. He was 25 years old.
August 2nd: Kieran Doherty died after 73 days on hunger strike. He was 25 years old. The following day Liam McCloskey joined the strike.
August 8th: Thomas McElwee died after 62 days on hunger strike. He was 23 years old. The following day outside the prison riots continued and two Catholic men were shot dead.
August 10th: Patrick Sheehan joined the hunger strike.
August 17th: Jackie McMullan joined the hunger strike.
August 20th: Michael Devine died after 60 days on hunger strike. He was 27 years old. Devine was the last prisoner to die as part of these protests. The family of Patrick McGeown agreed to medically intervene to save his life after 42 days on hunger strike. Owen Carron, Bobby Sands campaign manager for the Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP seat, won the by-election. A few days later Sinn Féin announced it would contest all Northern Irish elections in the future.
August 24th: Bernard Fox joined the hunger strike.
August 31st: Hugh Carville joined the hunger strike.
September 4th: The family of Matt Devlin asked to medically intervene to save his life after 52 days on hunger strike.
September 6th: The family of Lawrence McKeown asked to medically intervene to save his life after 70 days on hunger strike. The INLA announced it would no longer replace men on hunger strike at the same rate as before. John Pickering joined the strike the next day.
September 13th: James Prior replaced Atkins as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. The following day Gerard Hodgkins joined the strike.
September 21st: James Devine joined the hunger strike. The SDLP openly condemned the strike.
September 24th: Bernard Fox ended his strike on the 32nd day of his fast as his health deteriorated rapidly. Two days later, Liam McCloskey ended his strike on his 55th day after his family stated they would call for medical intervention to save him when he became unconscious.
