THE sister of murdered Six Counties journalist Lyra McKee said today that extremism is growing in the political vacuum left by a lack of devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Nichola McKee Corner was speaking after the announcement that a new journalism award was being named after her sister, who was shot and killed during a disturbance in the Creggan area of Derry in April 2019.

The One World Summit has decided to give its 2023 Journalist of the Year the title the Lyra McKee Award for Bravery.

The Stormont administration had collapsed in 2017 and remained dysfunctional at the time Ms McKee was killed.

Ms McKee Corner slammed politicians in Northern Ireland, saying they had not upheld the promises made in the wake of he sister’s death.

She said: “We were in a political deadlock when Lyra was killed.

“Lyra’s funeral was one of the first times in a number of years that all of the political leaders were together in one building.”

“And they had been making promises at that time that they would do what was necessary to get our political institutions back up and running.”

But, she said, “nothing had changed.”

The Democratic Unionist Party has refused to take part in the Northern Ireland Assembly ever since it lost the Stormont elections to Sinn Fein in May 2022.

At the beginning of September there was violent unrest in the same Creggan area of Derry where Ms McKee was killed. 

Searches carried out following the unrest revealed guns and quantities of ammunition.

Ms McKee Corner said there needed to be a return to devolved government to help curb the growth of extremism.

She said: “If you don’t have a stable government, there is a tendency towards anarchy as well, which is what we saw in 2019 [and intermittently since], particularly in the last number of weeks.”