Exploring my IRA lineage was a challenge . . .then I was told I had cancer

Ellen McWilliams enjoyed one of the biggest moments of her life when she published her book, but devastating news was not far away

Sunday Times, February 18th, 2026 

There is no writing cure, of course – not for cancer, not for anything. But writing makes it real. On the coldest day in January last year, the surgeon looks at me seriously as I wait for her to speak.

I speak first – I had not planned to say these words, but they tumbled into the room, nonetheless: ‘You have such a difficult job – I’m prepared for news that isn’t reassuring.’

The mass in my left breast appeared quietly in the last week of November 2024. Everything changed in the weeks that followed. On the last day of the semester as I climbed the hill to the university where I work I was stopped in my tracks and for a moment was sure I was going to faint. The inflammation, nausea, pain, and exhaustion that set in over Christmas tell the story.

The reassuring kindness of the radiographer opens the next scene. ‘You’re young,’ she insists when, at 47, I know I am not, not really. After a final ultrasound, she will guide me back to where I will wait to see the consultant.

‘It is suspicious,’ the consultant says, an excellent poker face – but the young student doctor alongside him looks like he is about to cry. He knows what this means. We all do.

My father died the previous June. A few weeks after his funeral I meet him in a dream at the bottom of the stairs of the church in Ahiohill, wearing his good grey sports coat, smiling and happy to see me.

The night before I go to the Bristol Breast Care Clinic at Southmead Hospital, I dream he is sitting at home in his chair by the fire in his working clothes and he looks bereft. I know his worry is for me.

There are three tumours in my left breast. The surgeon raises her right hand to mark where they are and for a moment I think she is blessing me with a sign of the cross. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

Later that week, I have my first encounter with the washing machine whoosh of the CT scanner, then a full PET scan, which is a bit like being invited to a party where everyone leaves once the music starts.

The hardest part is knowing you can’t touch your child for 8 hours afterwards because of the radiation risk. I will soon get to know the NHS administrator who will always find me an 8am slot on a school day, so I do not have to stay away from my child for too long.

This cancer caused the death of my grandmother who, shared my name. I am told mine has spread to the bones, has set up new colonies of disaster in my shoulder, right arm and spine, and there are other uncertainties that need to be investigated. I have been aware of a new pain in my skeleton, like sharp teeth gnawing at the bone from the inside out. ‘Metastatic’ has to be one of the ugliest words.

Meetings about treatment plans follow and I am composed throughout. In the first, a cancer nurse asks to see a photograph of my son. Cancer care attracts an unusual category of

human; capable of extraordinary compassion, and my distress would be an unhelpful distraction.

‘I’m sorry you have to be here,’ is the oncologist’s opening line I am called from the waiting room, and it is a very good one.

‘Thank you for being here,’ I reply. ‘This isn’t really about me’, I say and I mean it. I am not the protagonist in this cast of characters.

My husband later starts fixing things around the house, a DIY of distraction, but I catch his face when I turn, his eyes pleading with me not to die, not now, or any time in what we had imagined as the future.

When we find the courage to tell our son, it is, as I knew it would be, the worst moment of my life. He cries in a low moan I do not recognise. ‘Are you going to die? Will you lose your hair?’

The moans soften and I offer all the reassurance that I can and hope it isn’t the greatest lie that I will ever tell him. A few nights later he climbs into our bed and falls asleep in my arms.

Our son often laughs in his sleep, but tonight he wakes me with a quiet but elongated ‘No’ that rises and falls in sorrow.

A few weeks later he finds a card on the dresser and reads the words ‘Chemotherapy Alert Card’ and asks me what it means. As I try to explain, to my joy, he asks: ‘What do we have as a snack?’

I try not to think too much about how the past years of my life have been the most stressful and so if the body really does keep the score this must be the ultimate gamecard.

Because this new drama was preceded by another. In 2023 I published a book about the history of revolution and anti-colonial resistance in my home-place, Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution. It focused with particular care on the story of the Dunmanway Massacre of April 1922, the murder of 13 Protestant men and boys during a time of truce, an atrocity carried out by the West Cork Anti-Treaty IRA. It is a history painfully close to home given my near ancestors, who suffered and sacrificed so much for Irish national freedom, played a key role in the West Cork Anti-Treaty IRA. I wrote this book for many people, but most of all for our son. As a child of an Irish Catholic mother and English Protestant father, he stands at a crossroads in this history.

I received an outpouring of support from the people who mattered most – descendants of all sides of this history of revolution and civil war in West Cork. This helped because wading through violence in the archives, with its attendant fears of hurting the dead or the living, pushed me to the verge of emotional breakdown.

Neale Jagoe, the grandson of a man who fled the Dunmanway Massacre, wrote a powerful prologue to the book and we became friends in a tightrope walk through the pain of history, guided only by radical empathy and the understanding of what it is to be a descendant. In the weeks post-diagnosis he writes daily, asking how I am, sharing news he knows will keep my spirits up.

The political is now deeply personal. The Rev Harold Good, who oversaw the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA and who I first met at a book event, sends me a prayer, I think it must give me more than a fighting chance.

David Adams is the former loyalist paramilitary who helped to bring about the 1994 ceasefire and who was central to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a humanitarian aid worker, and also a cancer survivor. I message him on a day I am struggling and he perfectly describes the burden of cancer fatigue, a tiredness that is unlike any other, and I feel less alone.

I ask my oncologist if it is possible that my cancer has its roots in a gene pool full of tumult, of anti-colonial revolutionaries and risen people, wondering how long it has been fomenting.

And I am followed to appointments at the Bristol Royal Infirmary by the irony that my ancestors went to war against the British state and here the British National Health Service is working to keep me alive. My grandfather may have been a messenger for the West Cork IRA in the 1920s, but two of his sisters became nurses.

I wrote and published the book at the end of the Irish decade of centenaries – an exercise that seemed preoccupied with pageantry and made for the establishment, leaving the grandchildren of those who fought in the Irish war of independence and civil war to trek through the unbearable fog of history alone. I raise my voice on the subject, lose friends, and make enemies. ‘Breathe. Don’t brace,’ is one of the finest pieces of advice I received from a wise friend during my agonising encounter with the nightmare of history.

Receiving a diagnosis like this one is like turning up at your own funeral in disguise and so I held my clan close. There are mornings when my husband and I cling to each other before our son stirs, then begin our morning rituals as we get him to school. Everyday activities become precious and I find myself whispering to my husband’s shirts and son’s pyjamas that I will not leave them.

My writing about history sprang from a place made by what one reviewer described as ‘the agony of empathy’. And too often this has been the only way I know how to live – you give more than you take, you move with caution around other people’s stories, other people’s pain.

But it comes at a cost and can leave you open to the predatory instincts of those who only ever take more than they give, who mistake gentleness for weakness, quiet for dull. Now it is time to see them off as I engage in this fight for my life. The revolutionary women in my  family tree are never far away and I am tempted to raise the gun at this gallery of rogues, but they wouldn’t be worth the prison sentence.

My friend, Tim Kendall, poet and nature writer, who has survived cancer, sends me books, for the waiting rooms and I read them, as if hoping they might give me something of his courage.

Sometimes I circle back to who I was when I first explored so much great fiction as an English student at University College Cork in the late 1990s, a slim girl in jeans and T-shirt, hair in a pony-tail, reading late into the night, full of earnest concern for these stories that pierced my skin. A cancer diagnosis, as well as offering the ultimate opportunity for negative capability, as John Keats would say, pushes at the possibility for accepting what cannot be

changed while holding hope as fierce and close as the people you love most.

This new life will be made of uncertainty, of one step at a time and other most helpful cliches.

I will do my best not to die, I really will.

When I do die, as we all will, I will make a most loving and spectacular ghost. I make this promise to myself as I step off the cliff, tumbling through unfamiliar skies, into this new way of living.

If it happens to you, I can promise you there will be no going back, but the world will, in  time, stop turning upside down. In the meantime, hold on tight and catch your breath. Your feet will find the ground again. And, whatever happens, make sure you remember: breathe,

Free movement between Ireland and Britain could be on its way out

SAM MCBRIDE, Sunday Independent, Match 1st, 2026

I'm writing this at 30,000 feet, somewhere above the North Channel between Belfast and Heathrow. A few minutes ago, I showed my passport to board what is a domestic UK flight, but the Common Travel Area (CTA) means I could have got on in Dublin and shown only a driving licence or some other form of ID.

That is now changing in ways that erode this long-standing freedom of movement between Britain and Ireland. It survived partition, survived the Troubles and survived Brexit, but is now being strained by efforts to restrain illegal immigration.

For most of us, the CTA is a marginal issue. Most people tend to use their passport as ID for a flight, even if they don't have to. But last year I had reason to be thankful for the ability to use something other than a passport. At a Belfast City Airport departure gate, about to board a flight to England, I confidently presented my passport, only to be told by the attendant: "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think that's your passport.”

Dismayed, I realised it belonged to my 11-year-old daughter.

After a desperate fumble through my wallet, during which I realised that my press pass had expired, I stumbled on a photographic ID for the National Archives in London. Satisfied that I was who I claimed to be, the attendant let me board.

I might be the only person to have made this excruciating error, but the reason it didn't end my travel plans is because flights between Britain and Ireland, in effect, do not cross an immigration border, even if flights from the Republic cross an international one. It simplifies the continuation of centuries-old population movements.

Frequent flyers between Dublin and Britain complain that, for years, the city's airport seems to have a limited understanding of the CTA. What's happening now, though, isn't about misunderstandings, but a series of calculated alterations.

Five years ago, Ryanair began demanding passports on flights between Britain and Ireland. Last week, Aer Lingus followed suit. On the two most significant airlines that fly these routes, the old system of accepting driver licences, EU national identity cards, student cards or other photographic ID is dead.

In a strict technical sense, the law hasn't changed, largely because the CTA is a treaty, rather than law. In a joint communique less than four months ago, the Irish and British governments "reaffirmed their shared commitment to protect the integrity and security of the Common Travel Area to the benefit of citizens across these islands”.

Weak governments need strong controls

At that time, the envisaged threat to this long-standing arrangement was the UK's proposed identity card scheme. Keir Starmer's weakened government has since softened the central element of the planned digital ID: that anyone who wanted to work in the UK would need one.

But immigration law is changing across the EU, and it's hardly a coincidence that Aer Lingus's policy change coincides with a Europe-wide shift to electronic passport authorisations.

On the same day as that change, the UK implemented a policy whereby British citizens with a second nationality risk being refused entry without a British passport. Stricter enforcement of the UK's new £16 (¤18) electronic travel authorisation (ETA), which is similar to the US ESTA for countries that have a reciprocal visa waiver agreement, is also in place. Dual nationals are unable to get an ETA under the new rules, which is absurd. Few bureaucrats operate as unbendingly or with starker consequences as immigration officials.

Anyone who has applied for a visa will realise the painful bureaucracy and uncertainty this can involve.

The UK Home Office says these changes are about "moving to a modernised digital immigration system to enhance our border security”. In essence, public anger over migration means extra hoops to jump through at the airport.

These changes demonstrate how entwined we all are. Despite Brexit, realities of geography and scale means Britain often has little choice but to follow EU initiatives. The same prin­ciples mean Ireland's theoretical ability to do whatever it likes is constrained by the reality of long-standing links with the UK and the implications for its own land border.

The upshot of this is that if you fly from Dublin to London with an airline other than Aer Lingus or Ryanair, for now you don't need a passport, though if you book with British Airways, which shares an owner with Aer Lingus, you might end up on the latt­er's plane and be told you can't fly.

The Irish Government says: "There is no requirement for Irish and British citizens to carry passports when travelling within the Common Travel Area. However, it is the case that airline carriers in many instances require all passengers to have a passport in their possession before allowing them to board aircraft. This is not an immigration requirement.”

This is true. But what's the point of having a right that is unenforceable? The Dáil could give it teeth by legislat­ing to make it a legal requirement that airlines cannot ask passengers for a passport on GB-Ireland routes as long as they have another form of valid photographic ID.

All of this additional complexity involves an inescapable impact: more people are going to get lost in this labyrinth of rules and find themselves blocked when they try to fly. After a period of confusion, most travellers will probably adapt to this latest rule change. But it won't be the last.

Whatever we think of migration, it will be one of the great political challenges of this century. War, famine, extreme inequality and climate change will drive more and more people to take the risk of illegal immigration. Public attitudes to migration are hostile, meaning politicians either respond to that concern or lose their seats to those who will.

Paying MLAs more for Stormont shambles an insult to voters

Suzanne Breen, Sunday Life, March 1st, 2026

The idea that the brightest and best of Northern Ireland's professional talent will ever end up at Stormont is for the birds.

There are currently some highly capable, clever individuals in the Assembly who could walk into good jobs if devolution collapsed and never came back.

But there is a big chunk who would never command a £67,200 salary in the real world. They'd be fortunate to take home half of that.

The tribal nature of our politics means that in some places it always seems that the party label counts for far more than the calibre of the candidate.

A political Einstein could run in these constituencies, and they'd be roundly defeated by someone with barely a brain cell in their head, let alone an original thought.

There is no point in pearl-clutching over that. The electorate has every right to vote for whoever they damn well please.

But nobody should buy the narrative that a whopping pay rise will transform politics with a rapid rush of new talent rising to the top. It won't: our MLAs will remain as good or as bad as before.

And the strength of public feeling on the issue isn't about the individuals concerned. The anger emanates from the fact that Stormont is a productivity black hole.

The Assembly has spent more time with its doors locked than its lights on in recent years. Since power-sharing was restored in 2024, its delivery record has been abysmal.

Decision-making, if it happens at all, is at a glacial pace. We are being asked to pay for a premium service, but receiving a dial-up connection.

The argument for pay parity would be valid if Stormont's delivery record was comparable to the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales. But we have a talking shop that fails at basic governance.

If NHS waiting lists were being cleared; if housing targets had been met; if potholes were being filled; if a multi-year budget had been agreed, then a salary increase would be valid.

Rewarding failure

Instead, political failure is being rewarded, and it's a kick in the teeth to voters of all hues. A LucidTalk poll shows universal opposition to a big MLA pay rise.

Some 77% of unionists, 74% of nationalists, and 82% of Alliance/Green supporters said no. Yet only Stormont's two smallest parties are against the hike.

Fair play to the TUV's Timothy Gaston and People Before Profit's Gerry Carroll for taking such a principled stand. They have won the respect of voters who agree with them on little else.

By comparison, the stance of Stormont's big five - Sinn Fein, the DUP, Alliance, Ulster Unionists, and SDLP - is disappointing.

The official Opposition isn't proving very oppositional on this, and that's a major tactical mistake. Rejecting the salary hike would give the SDLP an incredibly strong hand going into next year's Assembly election.

The party performs well in the chamber every week, but most ordinary punters don't pay much attention to the minutiae.

MLA pay is an issue which registers far outside the political bubble, and the SDLP is missing a trick to put clear blue water between itself and its Sinn Fein and Alliance rivals at the polls.

The big five are all trying to wash their hands of the salary hike recommendation, emphasising that it was made by an independent board.

But the review has delivered the outcome that was always intended. When the legislation setting it up came before the Assembly, TUV and People Before Profit both warned that the dice was loaded to produce a huge pay rise.

The argument that MLAs deserve the hike because they do a difficult, dangerous job is nonsense. We are not back in the darkest days of the Troubles when politics could literally be a life-ending occupation.

Yet, ultimately, the buck stops with us. Every democracy gets the government it deserves. We go into the polling booth and hold the pencil on election day.

May 6, 2027, is 14 months away. Will we forgive and forget? Have MLAs scored a massive own goal, or will we let the game continue as it's always been played?

Blaming the Brits for all the troubles of west Belfast lets the IRA off the hook

MÁIRÍA CAHILL, Sunday Independent, Match 1st, 2026

The remarkably talented Lola Petticrew's Best Lead Actress in a Drama win at the Iftas was deserved. But, when the actor dedicated the award to "the kids of west Belfast” and declared that one in three lived in poverty because of "the legacy of war” and "Britain's hand in Ireland”, it was hard not to look for a sick bucket at the sight of the audience applauding.

Most of these people have never set foot in Ballymurphy, yet they were happy to accept a half-narrative and lend their weight to it publicly.

The 30-year-old, who is from Springhill, close to Ballymurphy, is right about the statistic. Government reports state that 31pc of children in the area live in relative poverty, meaning they have less than 60pc of UK median income, excluding housing costs.

What went unmentioned is that local politicians have neglected their duty to west Belfast kids, too. Sinn Féin has represented the constituency for three decades. The Northern Ireland Executive, led by First Minister Michelle O'Neill, only agreed to a draft anti-poverty strategy in June 2025 after a court found Stormont in breach of its legal obligations. Can't blame the Brits for that, Lola.

Perhaps it was nerves, or the rhetoric of a young actor who is hoping to effect change. Being born just three years before the Belfast Agreement may have had a bearing. Either way, Petticrew neglected to give the full picture.

Complaining about "political violence” without mentioning the impact real violence had on west Belfast takes some doing. If the performer thought the IRA also played a part in what Ballymurphy families faced, it was left unsaid. And so, to some of us, it looked like political point-scoring.

My dad's family is from Ballymurphy. The Cahills helped build community infrastructure there when Belfast Corporation abandoned the place. Discrimination was rife, housing conditions were dire, and 37pc of heads of household were unemployed. My grandfather Frank realised that the community had to help itself. He and others established a tenants' association, a credit union and co-operatives. My father, who had to leave school early, worked in one.

Locals built a filling station. Women secured factory space in an industrial estate to knit school jumpers, until the British army stole the land and built a barracks. Internment had a catastrophic effect on families. My granny had to raise nine children on her own with no wage. We were not unique.

In 1969, the Provisional IRA emerged, imprinting itself on lives and surroundings. Death or imprisonment was ever-present, touching nearly every household. For decades, the place looked like a war zone, with barricades of wood and barbed wire blocking streets.

Bombing and shooting a turn-off for investors

Bombing and shooting are a turn-off when you are looking for outside investment. Life was tough. Every week, queues stretched along the Whiterock Road, waiting for the post office to open for giro-cashing. I remember a neighbour, obviously waiting on her dole, sending a child to borrow an egg from my grandmother. "Mummy says she'll give you it back next week.” Things were so hopeless that graffiti on a wall read: "Is there life before death?”

If Britain's hand was heavy on the community (and it was), then paramilitaries also gripped its neck, slowly strangling its potential. And, while everyone pointed fingers at each other to avoid responsibility, clever, resilient people got on with the work. Fr Des Wilson and Noelle Ryan established community education classes in Springhill House. Frank Cahill called it a "kind and caring community”. It is. But it is also an insular community that does not take well to alternative narratives.

Most Ballymurphians don't mention that the area also produced corrupt IRA members who acted in self-interest.

Some stole community money and gambled it, stabbed and beat people, or abused children. Others sold counterfeit goods and cigarettes, polluting minds and lungs.

For every good community activist, there was an IRA hallion who exercised control. Children had their kneecaps blasted by "the boys” for not toeing the line. People rarely crossed them.

All of this is necessary to unpick when faced with Petticrew's narrative. Blaming the Brits is easy. Accepting that paramilitaries had culpability, too, is not as popular in today's luvvie culture. Of the 69 people killed in Ballymurphy, 36 were killed by republicans.

It is also important to hear others' voices. One of the things Springhill Community House did through decades of conflict was to establish friendships and links with unionists and loyalists — a little mini-peace process ahead of its time.

Which makes Petticrew's immature response to Ulster Unionist MLA Robbie Butler more depressing, given the former St Dominic's Grammar student has been afforded every opportunity in peacetime that many who walked the same streets before them were not.

Butler, in response to Petticrew's speech, tweeted that, when visiting a unionist area close to Ballymurphy as a child, he was told to "duck down in the back of the car… in case the IRA got us”. He ended, "I'm glad Lola didn't have to grow up with what my family and I did”.

Petticrew's response on Instagram stated: "I would care what a certain unionist politician has to say about me and west Belfast, but I'm too busy looking at my second Ifta.”

The actor should stick to acting.

Right-wing Loyalist's rally call to combat the 'foreign infidels'

JOHN TONER, Sunday Life, Match 1st, 2026

RIOTER ENCOURAGING RACISTS TO FLOOD COLERAINE FOR EASTER WEEKEND PARADE

A new far-right group led by a convicted loyalist rioter is encouraging racists to flood Coleraine over the Easter weekend to combat “foreign infidels”.

Our Northern Ireland Voice (ONIV), which emerged on social media over the last two months, is planning a “launch” event in the town on April 4.

The group describes itself on Facebook as “safeguarding the future of our people against foreign infidels” and calls for deportations while using AI-generated images to push its hate messages.

As part of the “rally programme” at the Diamond in Coleraine, the group plans to welcome speakers including Tommy Robinson supporter Richard Inman and ONIV organiser Daniel Douglas, a convicted rioter who also uses the name Dan Grundle.

A “moment of prayer” is also planned after the speeches before a “walk of witness”, with anti-immigration agitators urged to “make their voices heard”.

The group's social media page is dominated by promotional images in support of the far right including the message “all welcome, no foreign flags”.

ONIV claims to have had “extensive correspondence” with the PSNI to ensure “the rally (can) proceed through the proper channels and in line with all required procedures.”

The PSNI said: “Police are aware of a planned demonstration in Coleraine on Saturday, April 4. An appropriate and proportionate policing operation will be in place.”

ONIV organiser and convicted rioter Dan Grundle did not reply to a request for comment.

The father-of-three was jailed for a year and given two years on licence at Antrim Crown Court in 2023, having been convicted of rioting in Coleraine in April 2021.

National Front link

Grundle's uncle Jimmy, who died in 2009, was once employed by the National Front in England before returning home to Coleraine, his hometown, where he set up a branch that would become one of the most active in the UK.

Posting on Facebook in January, as reported by The Canary, Dan Grundle said: “Back in the late 80s, my late uncle tried to speak this message when he introduced the National Front to Northern Ireland.

“Although the message was similar in a way, many followed but did not agree with a lot the (National Front) stood for. The state we find ourselves in today, he would be turning in his grave.

“This time the approach must and will be different. This time the message will be heard... loud, clear and not silenced.”

The Canary online news site reported in January how ONIV was supported by prominent hard-right figures in Northern Ireland including notorious neo-nazi Mark Brown, gardener Steven Baker and football hooligan Aaron Beech.

Beech was part of a loyalist mob that beat Catholic community worker Kevin McDaid to death in Coleraine in 2014. He served seven years behind bars for GBH and three years for ABH after the attack on father-of-four and a second man 14 years ago.

Baker recently appeared in court alongside his partner Robyn Barnes over an incident during which pink knuckle-dusters were allegedly distributed at a women's far-right rally.

Baker is reportedly among a “panel of experts” advising ONIV, according to The Canary, while Portrush neo-nazi Brown is said to be a regular contributor to their now closed Facebook discussion page.

Brown, a former leader of the National Front in Northern Ireland, was jailed for two months for a “vile”, racially motivated attack on a taxi driver in 2019.

He had been convicted of offences against the same taxi driver a decade earlier, making remarks including “Muslim c***” and “low-rent Jihadi b******” after being arrested.

Dissident who stored lyra murder gun 'still committed to violence'

CIARAN BARNES, Sunday Life, Match 1st, 2026

PAROLE CHIEFS DASH DERRY REPUBLICAN'S HOPES OF EASTER RELEASE AS HE'S DEEMED 'A RISK TO THE PUBLIC'

A dissident republican jailed for having the gun used by the New IRA to murder journalist Lyra McKee has been refused release over fears he will reinvolve himself in further violence.

Niall Sheerin was hoping to have been freed before Christmas having completed more than half of his seven-year sentence for possessing the Hammerli pistol used to kill the reporter.

However, the 32-year-old's application was knocked back by Parole Commissioners.

New IRA supporters have launched a campaign demanding Sheerin's release, but Sunday Life has been told that will not happen so long as the dissident is deemed 'a risk to the public'.

The Derry-based gunman is assessed by the authorities as being a New IRA member who remains committed to violence. Sources say that unless that status changes, Sheerin will have to see out all of his sentence.

“There isn't a chance of him (Sheerin) being released until this changes,” an insider told Sunday Life.

“Especially so before Easter Monday as New IRA supporters are due to march around Derry and they have previous form for doing this in military uniforms and then stating riots afterwards.”

Sheerin's supporters blame the government's Multi-Agency Review Arrangements (MARA) on keeping him behind bars.

They claim that it was a MARA report deeming him a 'risk to the public' which led to his early release bid being rejected.

Segregated

However, Sunday Life can reveal that the decision was also based around concerns about Sheerin's jail visitors and his behaviour while on the segregated Roe House New IRA wing of Maghaberry Prison.

Our source added: “The New IRA releasing a statement at the start of 2026 telling its members to 'do your utmost to target the crown forces when an opportunity presents itself' has also damaged Sheerin's chances of release.

“He's listed as a New IRA prisoner and it's known that this gang is targeting police and prison officers, so that's another reason as to why he isn't being released back into the community.”

In a statement demanding Sheerin's release, the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (IRPWA), which campaigns on behalf of New IRA inmates, said: “Niall Sheerin is a political prisoner.

“No amount of State-sponsored labels or judicial overreach can strip him of his republican identity or his commitment to the struggle for a 32-county socialist republic.”

The IRPWA statement also confirmed Sheerin has been assessed by MARA as being a 'risk to the public'.

MARA, which was set up to counter terrorist risks, is the Northern Ireland equivalent of the English MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements) which is used to monitor Isis and al-Qaida extremists.

Any dissident republican prisoner freed early has to sign up to its guidelines which include being potentially returned to jail on intelligence-based reports.

At the time of the Lyra McKee killing in April 2019, Niall Sheerin — who was described by a judge as an “associate of a serious terrorist gang” — was believed to be the New IRA's quartermaster in Derry. The man in charge of weaponry.

He was charged with possessing the murder weapon which was found by police during intelligence-led searches of a field on the edge of the Ballymagroarty estate in June 2020.

Sheerin's DNA was discovered on the slide and magazine of the Hammerli pistol, which had surprisingly not been cleaned by the New IRA.

The father-of-three, who worked as a manager of a bookmakers shop in Derry, pleaded guilty to possessing the weapon on the basis he had no role in Lyra's actual murder.

During Sheerin's sentencing hearing, his previous convictions were revealed which include sectarian rioting and assault.

On one occasion he was recorded shouting at the PSNI “black b******s — I hope you all get shot”.

UDA thug MO 'trying to extort charity bingo group'

PAULA MACKIN, Sunday Life, March 1st, 2026

CLAIMS NOTORIOUS LOYALIST DEMANDING £400 A MONTH OR HE'LL CLOSE IT DOWN

UDA thug Mo Courtney has been accused of taking food from the mouths of sick kids in an extortion racket on a cross-community support group.

Multiple sources told Sunday Life the convicted killer, who denies involvement in criminality, is trying to strong-arm a group of women into handing him £400 a month which has been set aside for charity.

The support group was set up by a woman from the Shankill during the Covid crisis and is funded by online bingo games, with players from both sides of the divide taking part.

Because the bingo is unlicensed, and therefore illegal, organisers have been unable to seek help from the PSNI — something Courtney has exploited.

Any money left over from the games after the winners get their cut is donated to children's charities. However, the UDA boss wants the money for himself.

“The ladies who play the bingo have formed great friendships and it is truly cross-community, with people from the Shankill, Ardoyne and the Falls taking part,” one of the players told Sunday Life.

The source said the group started up during lockdown six years ago as a means to combat isolation and loneliness but quickly grew into a wider community, and they have been meeting up online once a week ever since.

“Not only do we support each other but we support charities and we have donated quite a bit of money to good causes.

“It's been a brilliant support network for everybody,” she added.

Other sources explained how Courtney threatened the ladies, warning that if they didn't meet his cash demands he would “shut you down”.

Two years ago, he pulled a similar stunt, having his UDA thugs set fire to a car belonging to a bingo player from Ardoyne who was visiting a friend on the Shankill at the time.

Courtney backed down after Sunday Life publicised his £100 per week blackmail demands, but he is now up to his old dirty tricks once again.

“Mo's a sick b*****d, a twisted individual who has poisoned the Shankill with his drugs and now he's stealing money from the pockets of sick children,” another source told Sunday Life.

However, JWB Consultancy which represents Courtney, denied he is involved in extortion attempts or had any knowledge of the incident.

Extortion

It said: “If anyone has any information in respect of this issue Mr Courtney urges them to take it to the PSNI and/or community restorative justice schemes.

“He will be happy to engage with the PSNI or any other body in regards ensuring it is made abundantly clear he had no involvement.”

Courtney's heartless extortion of the bingo ladies comes just a week after it was revealed loyalist paramilitaries continued to demand payment from businesses in the guise of protection payments.

Shop owners described how they were still operating in fear of violence from paramilitaries to pay protection money in what one Stormont minister called a “stranglehold on the community”.

Payments are often made under duress and are in exchange for agreeing not to hurt them or damage their property.

Some have gone bankrupt and lost their homes because they couldn't meet the extortionate cash demands.

One person said they were being extorted before they had even opened their store, adding: 'My friend told me we would be killed if we didn't pay.”

The PSNI has said intimidation will not be tolerated and those behind extortion demands will face the full force of the law.

Justice Minister Naomi Long spoke out against the ongoing racketeering and intimidation of terror gangs, explaining how they continue to exert a “stranglehold on the community”.

Sinn Fein linked-company holds over £220,000 in assets but no evidence of trading

Sunday Life, March 1st, 2026

Green Cross (Art and Bookshop) Limited, which includes IRA ex-prisoner Padraic Wilson as a director, is recorded as a retail business in government records — but apparently without any premises, employees, internet presence, or evidence of any trading activity or cash flow.

Despite holding reserves of £226,361, financial statements filed by the company and external searches provide no observable evidence of features typically associated with an operating retail entity, such as liabilities to creditors, fixed assets, stock movements, accruals, payroll or tax liabilities.

The registered company address appears to be an accountant's office.

Green Cross is registered as a private company concerned in the “retail sale of books in specialised stores”.

It is officially classified as a small company and “micro-entity”, and as such is only required by law to file unaudited and simplified accounts of assets, liabilities and equity.

Despite this, the accounts appear unusually streamlined and follow an unnatural and regimented pattern.

Every set since 2005 claimed Green Cross possessed an equity value equal to current assets.

This means it could not have owned any fixed assets or faced liabilities of any kind — something that would be highly unusual for an operational retail business.

Green Cross has also not reported holding stock of any value since 2006.

Its holdings appear to have increased substantially sometime between 2018 and 2019. Accounts in 2018 reported net assets of £67,441. However, this mushroomed to £185,027 the following year.

Since then it has consistently possessed net assets of £220,000-plus.

The company is directed by Mr Wilson and Sinn Fein's former finance director Sinéad Walsh, while the late senior republican Bobby Storey previously served as a director.

Both Walsh and Wilson have been embroiled in previous controversies.

In 2017 an investigation by BBC Spotlight was unable to find evidence a research company directed by Walsh actually carried out research.

It was revealed that, over a 10-year period, 36 different Sinn Fein politicians claimed nearly £700,000 in total through Stormont expenses to pay the company, Research Services Ireland.

It was directed both by Walsh and by Seamus Drumm, who also served as directors of the party's finance department in Northern Ireland at the time.

WRONGDOING

The PSNI initially investigated the matter but later announced it would not take any action, citing “increasing demands on our reduced resources”.

Sinn Fein denied any wrongdoing at the time.

Green Cross's other director Mr Wilson was a former IRA leader in the Maze.

He was jailed for 24 years in 1991 for conspiracy to murder, plotting an explosion and other charges, but freed early under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The company's solicitor Padraig Ó Muirigh told Sunday Life: “My client meets all legal requirements through its submissions to Companies House and to HMRC.

“Green Cross Art & Bookshop Ltd has not been operating as a retail business since 2010, but the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) has erroneously not been updated.

“I am instructed by my clients that this will be rectified at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Sinn Féin was contacted for comment in relation to the details in this report, however no response was forthcoming.

Deputy First Minister receives security briefing from UK Government on US-Israeli missile strikes on Iran

By Jonathan McCambridge, Press Association, Belfast News Letter, February 28th, 2026

Many people in Northern Ireland will be apprehensive about the situation in the Middle East , deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly has said.

Ms Little-Pengelly was speaking after receiving a security briefing from a UK Government adviser following US and Israeli forces' missile strikes on Iran on Saturday morning in what the two countries described as a "pre-emptive" strike against a Tehran government intent on developing nuclear weapons.

The attack prompted retaliation from Iran , with missiles reported to have targeted Israel and countries across the Middle East .

Ms Little-Pengelly said: "I know that many, many people will be really apprehensive about what is happening in Iran and across the Middle East .

"The Iranian regime is an appalling one, it has created a huge amount of instability in the region, it has killed many thousands of its own citizens.

"I know that there are many hundreds of people from Northern Ireland who are living and working in the Middle East , particularly in the UAE and of course many others that are visiting the region as well.

"I know that there are a lot of people worried about their loved ones and families at the moment."

The deputy First Minister said the briefing, which was also attended by the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers, was an opportunity to raise questions.

She added: "Also to try to push to ensure that the clear messages are coming out from the UK Government, clear advice to people who are in the region in terms of making sure that all of the support is there to keep people safe."

SDLP leader Claire Hanna said she was "deeply concerned" about the situation.

She said: "The UK must urgently push for de-escalation, press for an immediate ceasefire, and work with international partners to prevent a wider war.

"Diplomacy, not further military action, must be the focus."

Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard said the attacks on Iran "do nothing but bring the threat of wider conflict in the Middle East closer".

He added: "In the midst of ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran , these attacks are outrageous violations of the United Nations Charter and the multilateral system.

"This escalation must be condemned and the attacks should end immediately while a return to negotiations must be a priority."

Mr Hazzard added: "Many people from here will be deeply worried about their loved ones living in the Middle East .

"I would encourage anyone concerned who is living abroad or has families overseas to contact the Irish or British Embassies for assistance."

Additional Information added later

The Executive Office, which is led by the First Minister and deputy First Minister, said both women were offered a meeting by the Cabinet Office.

On social media, Ms O'Neill posted that "violations of the UN Charter during ongoing negotiations in the Middle East are deeply troubling".

She added: "Actions that disrupt diplomacy only make peaceful solutions harder to achieve.

"The attacks should end immediately and return to negotiations.

"Many families are deeply concerned for their loved ones abroad following the devastating scenes unfolding in the Middle East.

"All our thoughts are with those affected during this extremely difficult time."