It was a strange week in the Dáil as the normal rules of political engagement were turned on their head and Sinn Féin rather than the Government found itself the subject of intense scrutiny.
The exchanges during Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday were the most gripping in a long time, with Sinn Féin leader Garry Adams on the rack rather than Taoiseach Enda Kenny, as is the norm.
Just before coming into the Dáil chamber Kenny had met Belfast rape victim Maíria Cahill for an hour and a half, and was clearly touched and angered by the story of her abuse and the enforced cover-up.
He peppered Adams with questions about his handling of the case and twisted the knife by remarking: “She overcame the horror of being raped and had to face down the IRA and its generals, secret or otherwise”, an obvious reference to Adams’s consistent denials that he was ever a member of the IRA.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin joined Kenny in a two-pronged attack, pointedly quoting Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald’s attack on the Catholic Church after the publication of the Murphy Report. At that stage McDonald claimed that the most powerful men in the Catholic Church in the Dublin diocese had conspired to protect abusers of children, and she insisted the full rigours of the law should be used against them.
“The most powerful men within the IRA interrogated victims of abuse at the hands of leading members of the IRA. That happened,” said Martin.
Adams struggled to deal with the attacks, insisting that all he and the republicans named by Cahill had done was try to help her.
He went on to apologise to the victims of abuse who were let down or failed by the IRA. That only begged the question why he took it upon himself to issue such an apology if he was never in the IRA, as he has consistently claimed.
Adams, McDonald and other Sinn Féin TDs who waded into the defence have over the past few years shown themselves adept at putting politicians of the other Dáil parties under relentless pressure to justify their actions. Even the smallest slip-ups by the Government are pounced on with venom.
It was obvious from their responses inside and outside the Dáil that the Sinn Féin leadership found it very difficult to cope when the positions were reversed and similar demands of accountability were applied to them.
It is all down to Cahill that Sinn Féin has been put in this position. Kenny summed it up when he told the Dáil that “this is a courageous, confident and brave young woman who is a force to be reckoned with”.
It took great courage to go public in the first place and tell her story to the BBC Spotlight programme. The resolve she has shown over the past week in the face of Sinn Féin denials of her story and the vicious attacks on her character that have featured in the cesspit of social media has been remarkable.
Victims of abuse
She has forced Sinn Féin to admit that she was raped and that an internal investigation was conducted. Adams has apologised to her and to other victims of abuse but he has not accepted her version of the conversations that took place between them.
She has declared her intention of pursuing her campaign until he does so.
The question is what long-term impact, if any, will this have on Sinn Féin.
At the time Adams was arrested for questioning about the disappearance of Jean McConville, back in early summer, political opponents hoped that the controversy surrounding that issue might damage Sinn Féin in the European and local elections.
In fact it did nothing of the sort. Sinn Féin was spectacularly successful in the European elections, winning three of the 11 seats in the Republic and one of the three in the North, and also doing very well in the local elections, trebling its number of council seats to around 150.
The current controversy may be different because the victim is not just alive and visible but articulate and brave; willing to confront the republican leadership she regards as having failed her.
The Sinn Féin core vote is unlikely to be moved but the broader electorate into which the party has begun to make inroads may now prove harder to woo, regardless of disaffection with the Government. In particular the party’s capacity to attract women voters could suffer.
Since Sinn Féin began its long march to political respectability in the Republic women have always been more reluctant to accept the party's bone fides. For an extended period opinion polls showed that the party was attracting twice as many male as female voters. Over the past year or two the proportions were beginning to become more even as Sinn Féin support rose but men still significantly outnumber women as party voters, according to the most recent Irish Times Ipsos/MRBI poll.
Women voters
It is hard to see how the controversy generated by Cahill will not impact on the party’s potential to attract women voters. The fact that Mary Lou McDonald has backed Adams to the hilt will hardly help either.
The other bizarre event in the Dáil was the hysterical response of the technical group to Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett’’s decision to provide speaking time for ex-Fine Gael TDs Lucinda Creighton and Peter Mathews. The very same people who regularly denounce the Government for not providing enough time for Dáil debates on major issues had no compunction about denying other Independent TDs any speaking time at all.
In the spirit of openness and transparency it is time that issues like Dáil speaking time as well as the allocation of massive resources from the taxpayer to Independent TDs, and all of the political parties for that matter, are subject to serious debate.
