SUZANNE BREEN ON WHY O’NEILL IS THE OBVIOUS CHOICE FOR SINN FEIN... AND HOW SHE MEASURES UP TO FOSTER

Long before Martin McGuinness became ill, the front-runners to take over when he eventually retired were household names. Conor Murphy was the odds-on shot with John O’Dowd the clear second favourite.

Now, it appears to the public as if Michelle O’Neill has nudged ahead in the final furlong and snatched victory from her two male colleagues. But Ms O’Neill was never an outsider. Anyone who has followed her form recently would have tipped her for the top spot in Sinn Fein here.

It was so obvious. She is a grassroots activist who has served her time assiduously, coming through the ranks of local government to the Assembly. She is personally free of IRA baggage, yet her republican pedigree is impeccable.

Her family were prominent in the civil rights’ movement in Tyrone. Her late father Basil was a republican prisoner. Her cousin, Tony Doris, was one of three IRA men shot dead by the SAS in Coagh in 1991. He is immortalised in an Irish Brigade song, ‘Ambush at the Bridge’.

O’Neill has worked ferociously in two unglamorous ministries – agriculture and health. She took on the latter with gusto, never once complaining of being landed with a poisoned chalice.

Look back over her six years in ministerial office and you’re hit by how much she’s done. Her smiling, friendly visage stands out among a sea of suits in photographs taken in every nook and cranny of Northern Ireland.

When Fermanagh was hit by floods last January, Ms O’Neill

Her late father was a republican prisoner, her cousin was shot dead by the SAS in Coagh in 1991