‘I am sorry we didn’t do better’: Sinn Féin leader ‘disappointed’ by local election results

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said she is “disappointed” with the party’s performance in the local and European elections, saying “it hasn’t been our day”.

Ms McDonald said she would review the results and that “everything is on the table”, but she declared her intention to lead the party into the next general election.

With 296 of 949 local election seats filled after lunchtime, Sinn Féin had secured only 15. While gains are expected once the final result comes in, the party’s performance is far below previous expectations and is against a low base after a poor showing in 2019’s local and European votes.

“We have made some gains. They are modest, but they’re there. It hasn’t been our day. Clearly frustrations and indeed anger with Government policy, on this occasion, has translated into votes for Independents and others,” she said.

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Ms McDonald said Sinn Féin needed to reflect on the result and learn from it. “We will regroup. I am sorry we didn’t do better, I know that we can do better and I am determined that we will do better.”

She rejected suggestions that party headquarters had ignored concerns from the grassroots about Sinn Féin having too many candidates in the field. She also said her leadership of the party was not in question.

“I will lead this reflection, and this process,” she said. “When the going gets tough that’s the point at which leaders step forward, they don’t step down.

“We don’t always get it right. We clearly have lessons to learn.”

Asked what those lessons might be, she said Sinn Féin needed to “sharpen our offering and our message” on key issues like housing, the cost of living and health.

“What we will and must do better is to give real clarity to the solutions and the plans that Sinn Féin has for all of those issues, not merely diagnosing what is wrong but very, very clearly and very energetically setting out our stall.”

It was put to Ms McDonald that Sinn Féin was bad at figuring out where it stood with the electorate – running too few candidates in 2020 to take advantage of its support levels at the time, and too many candidates this time around.

She replied: “In 2020 we didn’t run enough candidates and as you know I heard a message loud and clear in that regard. I wanted to be sure that we didn’t make that mistake again. I wanted to be sure that everybody, wherever you lived, that you would have a chance to vote for Sinn Féin candidates. But look, clearly we didn’t get that right.”

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Simon Harris said his position on when the general election should be held “hasn’t changed” despite Fine Gael’s success in the local elections. He has previously said he wants the Coalition to continue for its full-term, which would mean a general election early next year.

Speaking at the RDS count centre in Dublin, with Fine Gael contending to be the largest party in local government, Mr Harris said: “I’ve answered this question many times since becoming Taoiseach… but my position in relation to that hasn’t changed.”

Asked about Sinn Féin’s performance in the elections, Mr Harris said it Ms McDonald has led her party into two local elections and both “have been an unmitigated disaster for them”. He claimed the “penny has now dropped” within Sinn Féin that “if you want to lead government you have to have some issues and policies”.

He said that that if Sinn Féin “became a little bit more obsessed with policy detail and playing a constructive role in solutions, maybe they’d be in a different place today”.

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