Michelle O’Neill to attend first Northern Ireland match at Windsor Park

Stormont’s First Minister and the GAA’s new president will be among guests at Windsor Park for a Northern Ireland Women’s football match on Tuesday.

Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill will be attending her first Northern Ireland game at the south Belfast venue. She will be joined by DUP deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly.

On Saturday, Ms Little-Pengelly accompanied her party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson as they watched the Ireland rugby team beat Wales in a Six Nations encounter at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.

Stormont junior ministers Aisling O’Reilly, from Sinn Fein, and the DUP’s Pam Cameron will also attend the Northern Ireland Women’s Uefa Women’s Nations League second leg play-off game against Montenegro on Tuesday evening.

Windsor Park has been more traditionally associated with the unionist community in the region and in the past the Northern Ireland football authorities faced problems around incidents of sectarianism at international games.

The Irish Football Association, working closely with supporters’ groups, has made major strides in the last two decades to address those issues through its award-winning Football for All initiative.

Then-Stormont sports minister Caral Ni Chuilin became the first senior Sinn Fein politician to attend a Northern Ireland game at Windsor Park in 2011.

The late Martin McGuinness attended a Northern Ireland match in France in 2016 during the European Championships tournament when he was deputy First Minister.

Ms O’Neill is Northern Ireland’s first nationalist First Minister. She has repeatedly vowed to be a “First Minister for all” and represent all sections of the community in the region.

New GAA president Jarlath Burns will also be at the game on Tuesday.

Mr Burns hailed the “excellent relationship” between the IFA and GAA.

He said while it would not be his first visit to Windsor Park, he said it was significant that Tuesday would be his first national engagement as GAA president.

“My first official engagement as president nationally will be to go to that match in Windsor Park and I think that’s an important statement to send out to the people of Northern Ireland that the GAA is inclusive and that we support all sport in the north,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.