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Sinn Féin woes pile up with latest revelations

Resignation of PAC chair Brian Stanley amid internal inquiry and ‘counter allegation’ adds to multifaceted crisis facing party leader Mary Lou McDonald

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald now faces a multifaceted crisis while preparing for a general election that may be only weeks away. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
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Pat Leahy
Sun Oct 13 2024 - 20:00

Things can always get worse. After a torrid week which saw Sinn Féin on the political rack over its former press officer’s child sex offences in Northern Ireland, and a sudden resignation of one of its TDs in the Republic, the party faced a further bombshell late on Saturday night with the resignation of one of its most high-profile TDs, the chair of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Brian Stanley.

Party leader Mary Lou McDonald now faces a multifaceted crisis which will continue this week and beyond – all while she is trying to prepare for a general election that may be only weeks away.

Going into this weekend, the party was dealing with twin controversies of the Stormont scandal and the resignation of Kildare TD Patricia Ryan amid a local revolt in the party. Then on Saturday, the Irish Independent reported a fresh controversy over alleged inappropriate text messages sent by a senior party figure, who has worked on both sides of the Border, to a 17-year-old. The senior figure has since stepped down from his position and resigned from the party.

Then on Saturday night came the news that PAC chairman Brian Stanley – one of the party’s best-known TDs in the Dáil who was especially prominent during the committee’s interrogation of RTÉ executives last year – had resigned from the party and would continue as an “independent republican”.

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[ Brian Stanley inquiry passed to An Garda Síochána, says Sinn Féin leader ]

Stanley said he had been the victim of a campaign by “a certain clique within the party” which, he said, “have gone to extreme lengths to damage my reputation and character. No efforts have been spared by them in this regard.”

He said he had been brought before an internal inquiry which was no more than a “kangaroo court”.

“Considering what I have experienced and how Sinn Féin has dealt with this and other matters across the wider party in recent months, I can no longer have confidence in it,” he said.

On Sunday, Sinn Féin said it had instigated the inquiry after a complaint about Stanley, adding that a “counter allegation” was also made. The party also said that it had now suspended the process and referred the issues raised to the gardaí.

But this prompts the question of why was it not referred to the gardaí earlier in the process?

Whatever the outcome of the Stanley affair, Sinn Féin needs it like a hole in the head right now. The scandal over the references supplied to party press officer Michael McMonigle by senior party figures at Stormont will receive another airing in the Dáil on Tuesday when the House hears what the official schedule refers to as “statements on child protection” but will actually be an excavation of that embarrassment for the party and a restating of some obvious questions about the party’s management of it. McDonald has apologised, but that does not mean that the questions have gone away.

The reports in Saturday’s Irish Times about how the party sought to vet questions to be put to McDonald at a party event will no doubt be raised. And TDs are likely also to raise the story about the senior party figure who resigned after the text messages.

When sorrows come, they come not as single spies but in battalions.

Sinn Féin often feels that much commentary in what some of its supporters calls the “establishment” or “Free State” media is hostile to it. Whatever the merits of that school of thought, even the most dyed-in-the-wool supporter would be hard-pressed to see all this as anything other than a full-scale crisis for Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership.