Monday 9 May 2022 02:17 AM Honouring IRA trio just weeks ago, the woman who could tear the UK apart, ... trends now

To her Sinn Fein supporters, at least, last week's elections marked the crowning achievement of Michelle O'Neill's life, with the 45-year-old republican now on the brink of making history if she is appointed Northern Ireland's first nationalist leader.

But the uncomfortable truth about how far Mrs O'Neill has clambered in her journey to the top of the Stormont political ladder was perhaps best symbolised by another, rather more private, moment six months ago when the mother of two watched her daughter Saoirse tie the knot in a lavish marriage ceremony.

A family photograph posted on Twitter showed Mrs O'Neill in a long white dress, veiled hat, fur wrap and corsage – an outfit that threatened to outshine the bridal gown worn by the daughter she gave birth to when she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl.

'Family and friends are everything,' she wrote in the post, with the photo showing her towering over her 28-year-old daughter and standing a few feet away from her painter and decorator ex-husband Paddy. Her comment immediately drew outrage from those who will not let Mrs O'Neill forget her troubling links to the IRA.

In February Mrs O'Neill attended the unveiling of a memorial stone dedicated to three former IRA and club members – shot dead by British armed forces – at Clonoe O'Rahilly's

'Pity SF/IRA didn't take the same attitude when they were out murdering people, the same IRA you continue to eulogise,' wrote one.

And another: 'The Provos didn't give much thought to families and friends when they were butchering and bombing them. You of course are their political representative. Enjoy the wedding.'

For while Mrs O'Neill has apparently become the acceptable, and unquestionably glamorous, face of republican politics at Stormont – the gymslip mum who turned her life around and devoted herself to her community in East Tyrone – many are uncomfortable with her links to the IRA.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams may have once claimed that Mrs O'Neill represented a 'new generation', but casting off the shadows of her past hasn't proved so straightforward. Mrs O'Neill's father and uncle were both IRA prisoners. Another uncle moved to Philadelphia and became president of Noraid, a US organisation that funded the IRA. Two of her cousins were shot, one fatally, while on 'active duty' with the IRA.

Within days of being appointed leader of Sinn Fein in 2017, taking over from Martin McGuinness, Mrs O'Neill expressed sympathy for four IRA terrorists shot dead by the SAS in February 1992 in her home village of Clonoe moments after they had launched a machine gun attack on an Royal Ulster Constabulary security base. She referred to them as 'young fellas' in comments later condemned by a family bereaved by the IRA.

And if Mrs O'Neill was thought to be cultivating a more moderate image as she advanced into mainstream politics then, just three months ago, this was shown to be misguided. In February Mrs O'Neill attended the unveiling of a memorial stone dedicated to three former IRA and club members – shot dead by British armed forces – at Clonoe O'Rahilly's – a Gaelic football club founded in 1916 and named after one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, launched by Irish republicans against