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The low down
Viewed from Westminster, the Northern Ireland Assembly and its executive is a young and fragile devolution project – the potential for instability hard-baked into a constitution that requires bitter political foes to work together or not at all. That perspective, though, hardly reflects the whole story. This year the country marks a century of devolution. And following the Good Friday Agreement, a generation has now grown up since the UK government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland went from the holder of a political hotseat that carried serious personal risks, to a low-ranking cabinet role. The lawmakers of the assembly and executive have worked their way through the demands of the pandemic – and done so while juggling a Brexit agreement that presents a serious challenge to peace and stability on the island of Ireland.