Election hoves into view after Sinn Féin’s terrible week

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.
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
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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