It has been a turbulent political week for Sinn Féin. The main Opposition party found itself the subject of waves of unwelcome publicity as it struggled to address successive controversies that broke over the course of last weekend. First came questions over the identity of an unnamed senior party figure in the North who had stepped down from Sinn Féin last year after having been found to have sent inappropriate text messages sent to a 17-year-old. Then came the unexpected resignation from the party of veteran Laois TD Brian Stanley, who accused Sinn Féin of unfair practices during an internal investigation into an unspecified complaint against him, and into a subsequent counter-complaint.
On Monday, party leader Mary Lou McDonald was forced to explain why Sinn Féin only referred the Stanley affair to the Garda the day after Stanley had resigned. By Tuesday afternoon, she was acknowledging to a packed Dáil chamber that the senior figure in the texting case was Sinn Féin’s former leader in the Seanad, Niall Ó Donnghaile. That prompted further questions about the three-month gap between Ó Donnghaile’s departure from the party and his resignation as a senator, when he received a warm public tribute from McDonald.
In her Dáil sketch, Miriam Lord described McDonald’s speech as “a litany of how things went wrong and how it wasn’t Sinn Féin’s fault. Just an unfortunate series of oversight events”.
Sinn Féin’s very bad week comes towards the end of a difficult year, with reversals at the polls followed by the revelation that two party press officers had provided references for a former colleague, Michael McMonagle, despite the fact that McMonagle was under investigation for child sex offences for which he has since been convicted.
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It remains unclear what impact, if any, all of this will have on the party’s fortunes in the general election that now appears likely to take place at the end of November. That timetable was strongly hinted at by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin on the Irish Times Inside Politics podcast on Wednesday. It became even more probable on Friday when Green leader Roderic O’Gorman expressed his preference for a vote on Friday, November 29th.
Columnist Justine McCarthy suggested on Friday that McDonald’s prospects of becoming the first female taoiseach in the history of the State appear to have receded dramatically as a result of this week’s events. But Political Editor Pat Leahy was not so sure. “Will the election be about the culture of Sinn Féin, or the individual controversies, or the numerous questions that are undoubtedly outstanding for the party and its leader?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”
We will know the answer in just a few weeks’ time.
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
Editor
Five Key Reads
- The trials of Stephen Roche: The Irish former world champion cyclist has lost his holiday business, his villa in the south of France, pension, investments and many of his closest associates. Does he have any regrets? He discusses it all in an interview with Ian O’Riordan.
- I am Irish and live in Israel. The war we see on TV is not the one you see: Paul Kearns, a freelance journalist from Dublin who lives in Tel Aviv, writes that “the simple truth is Israelis do not see what the rest of the world sees almost every night on their television screens. The harrowing images of the bodies of bloodied and lifeless small children covered in dust in the arms of a mother or father are rarely, if ever, shown on mainstream Israeli television news. People, of course, talk about the war. Every night Israeli news channels talk of little else. But this is a narrative of a different war.”
- David McWilliams: What about essential workers being given access to subsidised homes in Dublin 1?: Nearly a year after riots focused attention on the city centre, it is clear that what Dublin city lacks most is not gardaí but residents. People make cities and Dublin city doesn’t have enough citizens. Boost the population and we will transform the city.
- I went for a 13-week appointment and experienced the deafening agony of the silent sonogram: When you are accustomed to a national fluency in the language of grief, miscarriage can be desperately lonely, writes Dr Claire Moriarty
- US Election: Motor City still an engine of self-belief despite its bad-boy reputation: Detroit prides itself on being tougher than the rest, so it is going to take a brave soul to inform them that Motor City is just an extension of Cork city, with more soul food and less hurling.
Elsewhere, this weekend Cuala take on Kilmacud Crokes in the Dublin senior club football final. Malachy Clerkin spoke to Cuala grandee Des Cahill ahead of this afternoon’s match at Parnell Park while in Tallaght, Shelbourne will take on Athlone Town in the women’s FAI Cup final. Mary Hannigan tees it up.
In this week’s On the Money newsletter, Joanne Hunt looks at the eligibility around home-retrofitting grants and whether you could be entitled to up to €30,000 to help improve the energy efficiency of your home. Sign up here to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox every Friday.
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