Sinn Féin candidate says video of campaign van playing pro-IRA song may be fake

Sinn Féin Cavan-Monaghan candidate Pauline Tully has said a video purporting to show her campaign van playing a pro-IRA song may have been faked.

The video of the van seemingly playing the Wolfe Tones song ‘Celtic Symphony’, which contains the line “ooh, ah, up the Ra”, in Kingscourt, Co Cavan, emerged online in recent days.

At the Cavan-Monaghan count centre in Cavan town on Sunday morning, Ms Tully told The Irish Times she was not present when the video was recorded, and she thought the audio on the video did not seem authentic.

“I saw the video and I thought it looked like it was imposed,” she said. Asked if she believed the video was faked, she said “possibly. I can’t say for certain. I don’t know”.

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Asked who would have made a fake video, she said: “You just look at the headlines and the stuff that has been thrown at us in the last week or so. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Matt Carthy, her running mate, said Sinn Féin expected to take two seats in the constituency. "I've said from the outset that if we don't take two seats we'll consider it a failure. This is very much a team effort and a strategy that is designed to deliver two seats."

He said he wanted to see "a Republican programme for government". "My understanding is Mary-Lou is going to be contacting all the political leaders over the next day. We want to see, if at all possible, a government formed without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.

“I think that’s very clearly what a large proportion of the electorate would like to see also. The worst case scenario is that the Irish people are subjected to an FF and FG government,” he said.

“It’s not a matter of red lines, but our priorities are clearly in relation to addressing the housing issue, giving workers and families a break. What we’ve been saying during the elections is what we mean, they are the policies that drive us as party members but have clearly driven our electorate over the past number of weeks.”

Ms Tully said Sinn Féin votes “should be considered when talking about coalition, they’ve been totally disregarded and said they won’t talk to us at all, that’s leaving out a huge chunk of the electorate and the electorate has spoken”.

“We’re one of the big three, so we have to be considered,” she said.