Three decades of growth under threat as violence returns to Northern Ireland Since the Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland has won a hard-fought prosperity its companies are desperate to maintain It is almost four decades since Belfast made the DeLorean sports car immortalised in the Back to the Future movie franchise. But the recent scenes of burning buses and rioters hurling petrol bombs have handed Northern Ireland an uncomfortable taste of its own past. Unionist anger over post-Brexit trading arrangements combined with outrage over Sinn Fein leaders avoiding prosecution for attending the funeral of senior IRA member Bobby Storey during the pandemic, created scenes on the loyalist Shankill Road reminiscent of the worst days of the Troubles. The turmoil casts a shadow over the economic revival of the province and a surge in foreign investment since 1998’s Good Friday Agreement.