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How Sinn Féin bungling turned a controversy into a crisis

Sinn Féin figures did not know what to say about the party’s handling of job references for a former official with a child sex offence conviction, but it was the issue they couldn’t escape

The party’s handling of the decision by Sinn Féin’s Séan Mag Uidhir and Caoloán McGinley to offer Michael McMonagle (above) references has been stumbling, at best. Photograph: Trevor McBride
Mark Hennessy's picture
Mark Hennessy
Sun Oct 13 2024 - 07:02

For a political controversy to become a crisis, it must usually do a number of things. Jeopardise the existence of a government. Threaten the place of a party in a government, or a minister’s position, or it must risk the catastrophic loss of votes. The crisis surrounding Sinn Féin’s handling of job references for a former official, Michael McMonagle, now convicted of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity, holds none of those elements, yet it still became a crisis.

The party’s handling of the decision by Sinn Féin’s then-head of communication Séan Mag Uidhir and his more junior colleague Caolán McGinley to offer McMonagle references has been stumbling, at best. If Sinn Féin had a strategy, it was to ensure that the issue remained “a Northern problem” and it made every effort to ensure that it did nothing to encourage the story to bleed into media coverage in the Republic.

First Minister and Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Michelle O’Neill and Stormont’s Economy Minister Conor Murphy took up the primary defensive roles, leaving party leader Mary Lou McDonald in the background. But McDonald remaining out of sight scuppered the party’s efforts to rebuild in the Republic after six months of tumbling polling figures, which has been widely attributed to the anger of some voters about the party’s stand on immigration.

For Sinn Féin, a strong assault on the Government’s pre-election “giveaway” budget was not only needed, but necessary. Senior figures such as McDonald and Pearse Doherty had put in countless hours to bring that about. The McMonagle crisis set much of that at naught. For days, McDonald was kept away from media opportunities on the Leinster House plinth, while the party leader avoided TV cameras last Saturday when she attended a pro-Palestinian rally in Dublin. In fact, the party did just one Leinster House Press engagement last week and none this week, despite a trove of “commentable” issues.

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Meanwhile, every conversation the party had with journalists was dominated by an issue it did not want to talk about. When they were approached, party figures often did not know what to say. Conor Murphy landed in bother after a TV interview when he said that Sinn Féin could not have briefed the British Heart Foundation because of fears of prejudicing McMonagle’s case. Nonsense, of course, and the man who should have realised that most of all is Murphy himself. “One of those cases where a mouth was in gear in front of a camera, but not anything else,” commented one political observer, with a degree of sympathy.

[ Michael McMonagle scandal: Sinn Féin needs to get to grips with its troubled relationship with money ]

The issue dominated Northern Irish press, TV and radio. Coverage and indeed public interest in the Republic, however, was slower to start, quickest to fall away and never reached the level of anger that seasoned politicians recognise as threatening immediate danger.

Still, it is difficult to see how the controversy will cost Sinn Féin votes. Barring something unexpected, Northern voters will not go to the polls for three years, while even if nationalist voters there had a vote soon they would have been unlikely to desert the party over this.

Most significantly, Stormont politicians want a period of peace, judging by the Democratic Unionist Party’s lack of appetite for a full-throated fight on the issue. The upcoming Jeffrey Donaldson trial may have helped in the staying of the hand, too.

In the Republic, the situation is slightly different. The issue has not “gone nuclear”, as political strategists would say, but it has the potential to niggle away at the softest Sinn Féin support – the people who are “prepared to give them a chance this time”. In time, the headlines will fade.

But the crisis leaves issues in its wake. It offers new fuel to those who would make charges about how Sinn Féin is run, and by whom. It revealed significant shortcomings in the party’s operations, especially around child abuse protection protocols.

And it is not that the party does not have protocols. It has done for some years, but they did not work this time, even if senior party figures were blindsided by the inexplicably poor judgment shown by McMonagle’s colleagues in offering the references in the first place.

Being caught off-guard by that blunder is one thing. However, Sinn Féin compounded the mistake by failing to promptly take Stormont security passes off McMonagle. More seriously, it followed that up by trying to place blame upon the British Heart Foundation. However, it quickly emerged that – contrary to earlier denials – Sinn Féin had been contacted directly by the heart charity to check up on the McMonagle references. O’Neill had to offer an apology to its chief executive.

[ Sinn Féin aware a year ago that party members gave references to press officer convicted of child sex offences ]

Controversy, and the handling of it, always illustrates culture. Faced with allegations about one of theirs, other politicians – in particular Fianna Fáil ones – instinctively, if privately, first wonder if the allegation is actually correct, even if they will forcefully defend their colleague in public.

By contrast, Sinn Féin remains – and certainly this is true of the vocal so-called social media ‘Shinnerbots’ – tied to a playbook that insists on seeing every criticism as illegitimate, or part of a conspiracy.

The party acted quickly to get rid of the officials, but nearly every other action was mistimed, poorly executed, or inept. And the failures come on the back of other failures, since it has had a recent history of HR-type disputes involving allegations of bullying. And that is without going back to the litanies of failures – still rejected, or only grudging half-accepted, if that – related to the treatment that was meted out to Máiría Cahill after she was raped by an IRA member.

[ Sinn Féin’s handling of sexual abuse a recurring issue for the party ]

Now, McDonald has ordered the party’s incoming general secretary to carry out a complete overhaul of governance procedures: “We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she said.

Notably, she then said external professional advice will be taken. The extent and influence of that external oversight remains to be seen. Sinn Féin has long been a party that has not only not welcomed outside scrutiny, but repelled it. Structures that worked, or may have worked, in the past are no longer serving it well. Sooner, or later, the old rules of secrecy, of “whatever you say, say nothing”, will no longer do.