a guard of honour for sinn fein's party leadership the history makers they are a party for a united ireland long linked to the provisional ira as the terror group's political wing the idea shin fein could win an election in northern ireland was once unthinkable now the reality let's have a healthy debate about what our future looks like something that's better for each and every one of us where we all have a valued place in our society so i really encourage that conversation we have made an ask of the irish government consistently that they must now create the conditions for a conversation around constitutional change that has always been our perspective and that will be my perspective tomorrow as well then an attempt to comfort unionists here who fear what shin fein will do with victory don't be scared the future is bright for all of us but shin feins idea of a bright future is the nightmare of the once dominant dup they have now fallen into second place punished by their own unionist base for failing to stop the brexit protocol and separating northern ireland from the rest of the uk but still their leader sees it differently has brexit cost you this election well the eup has done extremely well in this election unionism has held its ground the unionist vote remains strong we are the largest designation in the assembly i think there's a lot of spin around results and i'm very pleased with how the dup has done this election has delivered an historic result but it is still unlikely to deliver a functioning government for people in northern ireland the way government in northern ireland is set up is it's based on cross-community power sharing so while we have all the symbolism of sinn fein taking the first minister position they can't actually do that unless there's a dup deputy first minister to to go to go alongside them and jeffrey donaldson the dep leader and others in his party have been making very clear um over the course of these election counts that they're not going to go back into the executive unless the issues around the northern ireland protocol are resolved a failure to agree that power shading executive means this shin fein victory would be largely symbolic for now but what it symbolizes cannot be ignored this result is a reflection of change on the island of ireland change that's no longer on the horizon but already here