Pat Leahy: Sinn Féin and leader Mary Lou hit a speed bump

Very unusually, these have been a bumpy few weeks for Sinn Féin and its leader.

For perhaps the first time since her party’s bull run began in 2020, Mary Lou McDonald has faced a series of controversies, difficult questions, uncomfortable media interviews and negative headlines. The party’s normally voluble media performers disappeared from the Dáil plinth for a few weeks.

None of this has altered the general picture of Irish politics, with Sinn Féin far out in front of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, on course to be the largest party in the Dáil after the next election. But Sinn Féin’s difficulties have signalled that the more it becomes a “normal” party, the more it is subject to the normal vicissitudes of politics. And nobody gets everything their own way all the time.

The most unsettling event for Sinn Féin since the summer was the conviction of former cllr Jonathan Dowdall for his involvement with the Hutch organised crime gang in the murder of David Byrne. Dowdall was not just a party councillor — he was a constituency colleague and donor to McDonald. Photographs of the pair have been ubiquitous in media reports, while the description of Dowdall as a “former Sinn Féin councillor” accompanied every report of the gangland trial in the Special Criminal Court.

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That distinction was further illuminated when McDonald said that there was ‘no comparison’ between gangland violence and IRA violence

McDonald insisted that had Sinn Féin any idea that Dowdall was mixed up in gangland crime, it would never have entertained his political ambitions. That is no doubt true. But it has shone a light on the distinction that party draws between acceptable or necessary violence — as practised by the IRA — and the unacceptable violence of criminal gangs.

That distinction was further illuminated when McDonald said that there was “no comparison” between gangland violence and IRA violence — a view that was immediately contested by IRA victims, North and South.

For many voters, particularly younger generations, the IRA campaign is a matter of ancient history. Paradoxically, many of these younger people — apparently uninterested in the historic atrocities of the IRA — are extremely exercised by the historic crimes committed by Catholic clerics against children and the appalling treatment of women by some State institutions.

That is a contradiction likely to be explored by Sinn Féin’s opponents in future campaigns. The potential for harrowing personal stories from the relatives of IRA victims — such as what happened during the 2020 election campaign with the family of Paul Quinn, beaten to death in 2007 in Armagh — to detonate underneath Sinn Féin may have diminished as time passes, but it has not disappeared entirely.

The Sinn Féin leader also faced unwelcome questions, following the publication of a biography by Shane Ross last month, about how she financed the purchase and renovation of her house. McDonald’s response has been a curt dismissal, insisting that she has a normal mortgage on her family home — and a legal threat to Ross from her husband.

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It does seem from mortgage documents relating to her previous home that McDonald and her husband Martin Lanigan made a very large profit from the sale of their previous home before financing their current home and renovation with that profit and a mortgage from Bank of Ireland. If that is so, you’d wonder why she doesn’t simply say so.

The legal threat to Ross has also focused attention on the growing tendency of Sinn Féin politicians to sue not just media outlets but also political opponents for defamation. McDonald herself is suing RTÉ, her third such legal action. It is a practice that has proved effective in deterring reckless criticism and also lucrative for some Sinn Féin politicians. Whether it will be politically profitable seems less likely.

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Despite the discomfort caused by all this in recent weeks, it is doubtful that any of this will cause lasting damage to Sinn Féin. But the recent ardfheis also pointed to two strategic issues with which the party will have to wrestle before the next election.

As Miriam Lord noted, McDonald mentioned “change” no fewer than 18 times in her conference speech — a testament to the extent that the party has made change central to its political message and strategy.

Even if the party is the largest in the next Dáil, it is not yet clear what is its path to government

But as the party faces up to the real prospect of power in Dublin, it has also embarked on a campaign to reassure not just voters but also businesses here and abroad that a Sinn Féin government would be no threat to the Irish economic success story. The party, which once advocated the wholesale nationalisation of industry and leaving the EU, nowadays insists that its plans will leave Ireland’s economic model very much intact.

The difficulty will be campaigning for change on one hand and reassuring people that it is an unthreatening sort of change on the other.

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Second, even if the party is the largest in the next Dáil, its path to government is not clear. There are two possible routes — at the head of a left-wing coalition, or with Fianna Fáil. The first seems numerically (now at least) unlikely, while the second has the obvious drawback of depending on someone else. It’s just not clear what Fianna Fáil will do; it may yet have the option of returning to government with Fine Gael.

McDonald presides over a party that is in a stronger position than ever before. But all that brings its own challenges. And two years out from an election, there are no certainties in politics. The past few weeks have been evidence enough of that.