The threats to the peace process are very real and have to be faced down

THE Northern Irish peace process faces existential threats on several fronts and in the 21 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed peace in the north has rarely been in such jeopardy. The paralysis in Stormont and the chaos of Brexit in Westminster have left northern politics in a shambolic state and the province crying out for real leadership.

Now into the power vacuum have stepped the murderous sectarian savages of the dissident republicans.

In recent years the dissidents – under various banners – have been largely forgotten.

As they increasingly moved into crime and the drugs trade they were too often seen as an archaic and occasionally worrying hangover from the troubles.

A problem certainly, but not a particularly serious one.

As the world’s focus switched to Islamic terrorist organisations, groups like the Real IRA and the many other fringe dissident Republican groups slipped out of the spotlight.

There was news of the occasional weapons seizure or arrest but typically when they appeared in the headlines in recent years it was due to their involvement in Dublin’s gang feuds.

In 2009 the Real IRA shot dead two British Soldiers outside the Messereene Barracks in Antrim and in 2011 a PSNI Officer was murdered in a car bomb attack outside his home in Omagh.

These incidents – along with a series of car bomb attacks in 2010 – should have alerted people to the growing threat but they were never really treated with the seriousness they deserved.

It’s hard to know why. Could it be that in the face of Islamic terror the public just didn’t take the republicans seriously anymore?

Maybe it was the dissidents’ widespread image as motivated but ineffectual fanatics that allowed them slip under the radar.

Perhaps, after the long horror of The Troubles, Irish people North and South just wanted the terrorists to be gone and so ignored them. We can ignore them no longer.

Emboldened by the political standstill in Stormont and by Brexit’s threat to the border and the Good Friday Agreement the dissidents have returned in force.

The car bomb attack at Derry Courthouse in mid January was a worrying sign of things to come.

It has been followed by an upsurge in low level sectarian violence and with threats from the dissidents that they intend to significantly ramp up their campaign in the coming months.

That planned escalation would seem to be the motivation behind the recent spate of ATM robberies in the border region as the dissidents work to finance their murderous activities.

The recent surge in violence came to an appalling nadir last week with the murder of young Derry journalist Lyra McKee as she covered a riot that had been inflamed by the dissidents.

Her tragic death has rightly shocked the world and highlighted the perilous state of the peace process.

Ms McKee’s murder is a tragedy. One can only hope it will force politicians in Dublin, Belfast and Westminster to pay attention to what is happening before another life is stolen.