In Northern Ireland the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which ended the years of 'troubles' and set the region on a path towards devolution, power-sharing and ostensibly peace, has been broken numerous times resulting in the British government suspending devolution powers. Since the last occasion on which devolution was suspended, in October 2002, it has not been restored. In an effort to restart the peace process, the British and the Irish governments promised in a December 2004 statement to restore power-sharing to Northern Ireland on the condition of that (1) all paramilitary activity cease, (2) weapons are decommissioned, (3) new political institutions are stabilized and (4) all communities support the police.

However, before the process could even begin, a Catholic, Robert McCartney was brutally murdered in January 2005, allegedly by agents of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), although this was denied by the IRA. Public opinion mounted against IRA as a result of the circumstances surrounding the McCartney murder, and in the campaign leading up to the May elections in the United Kingdom, the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin distanced itself further from the IRA. Following a good election for Sinn Féin, the IRA finally declared its readiness to disarm and end all violence in July 2005. A march by the Orange Order in Belfast in September 2005 however disrupted the peace yet again, and it remains unclear when devolution will be reinstated for Northern Ireland.

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