Maíria Cahill wouldn’t be the first badly treated woman to derail republicanism

Wronged women have brought the republican movement to its knees in the past.

In a very different context from the Maíria Cahill case, the heroic sisters of Robert McCartney humbled both the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership after their brother was stabbed to death outside a Belfast pub in 2005.

The news moved the late Ted Kennedy to cancel a planned meeting with Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, in the US for St Patrick's Day, because of the IRA's ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law.

There was no place for Mr Adams that year at the White House either; George W Bush chose to play host to the McCartney sisters.

Those women were among the first in the North to muster the courage to stand up to the IRA’s tactic of attempting to rule their own community by fear. On his blog last night Mr Adams said Republicans never oppressed Republican/Nationalist communities through political control and vigilantism.

At that time, Mr Adams protested that Sinn Féin was being unfairly condemned. “There’s politics in this,” he told Washington’s National Press Club. There’s politics in the Maíria Cahill case too.

Sinn Féin’s political opponents, north and south, cannot resist the temptation to champion her cause, although they stress that she has sought meetings with them.

Popular support

With attention now turning to a general election in the Republic, Sinn Féin is surging ahead in popular support. The party is neck-and-neck with Fine Gael for the first time, according to the latest

Irish Times

/Ipsos MRBI poll.

Currently the most popular party with men, Sinn Féin is conscious that attracting more female voters is an area it needs to work on.

The assumption (and it is only an assumption, so further study could prove rewarding) is that the party’s past continues to be regarded as too unsavoury for a cohort of women in the Republic.

There is no need for a focus group to point out how damaging the Cahill case could prove in that regard.

Attention has shifted from Mr Adams's insistence that he did not discuss Ms Cahill's allegations of rape by an IRA member with her, and his "horrified" reaction to remarks she attributed to him in the recent Spotlight broadcast.

Fairly or unfairly, the focus has shifted to the reaction of the party’s female Oireachtas representatives, all three of whom seem curiously comfortable with the party’s handling of the controversy.

Female representatives

Two of Sinn Féin’s 14 TDs are women: the formidable debater and deputy party leader Mary Lou McDonald needs no introduction.

Cork deputy Sandra McLellan has a much lower profile, but used her maiden speech in the Dáil to “make a commitment to use my time as a deputy to stand up for women and to drive forward issues that are relevant to women in Ireland today”.

The youthful Cavan Senator Kathryn Reilly, brimming with potential, makes up Sinn Féin's trio of female Oireachtas members.

The party is on a sticky wicket. On the one hand, its representatives say they believe Ms Cahill was abused. On the other hand, while calling on anyone with any information about child sexual abuse to go to the authorities immediately, they essentially say they do not believe anything else Ms Cahill says.