Sinn Féin open to entering coalition as junior party with FF or FG
■ Adams to signal future plan in TV address
SINN Féin is opening the door to being a junior partner in government, just as Gerry Adams signals a timeline for his retirement.
In a major policy shift, the party’s ruling body will formally recommend that members keep an open mind on working with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.
The move will heap pressure on the two main parties to categorically rule out any potential co-operation with Mr Adams’s party after the next election.
Mr Adams, who marks 34 years as Sinn Féin president this week, will also “make it clear” what his own political future is at a party Ard Fheis this weekend. Expectation is growing that he will set out a “timeline for generational change”.
To date, Sinn Féin’s policy has been that it will only enter a coalition if it is the largest party. However, at the Ard Fheis on Friday, the party’s Ard Chomhairle will propose any future decisions on a coalition should be made at a special post-election meeting of party members.
Finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, who is a member of the Ard Chomhairle, confirmed this means it could become a junior coalition partner, or even enter a confidence and supply arrangement, in future.
“Sinn Féin wants to be in government north and south,” he said. “We’re willing to talk to any individual or any party who are willing to build the houses, to reopen the hospital beds, to end the waiting lists and deliver on Irish unity. They are the major issues we want to see tackled in Irish society.”
The Ard Chomhairle’s motion will face some opposition, as a number of local branches have placed their own motions seeking to stop Sinn Féin going into government as a junior partner.
Others set out preconditions for entering government, such as the abolition of property tax and a hike in dole payments for young people.
However, it would be extremely unusual for the membership of Sinn Féin to go against a proposal from the Ard Chomhairle.
Mr Adams is expected to be re-elected unopposed as party president – but will use his live televised address on Saturday night to outline his intention to eventually step aside.
Mr Doherty appeared to rule himself out as a potential candidate for leader, saying: “At this point in time, if there were a vacancy, I would not be running for that position.”
Debates on bullying and abortion will also weigh heavily on the programme.
In recent days, Sinn Féin saw yet another councillor resign amid claims that he was the “victim of an intense nine-month hate campaign of harassment and slander”.
But Mr Doherty rebuffed any suggestion of a bullying culture, repeating the line that Sinn Féin has “robust processes and procedures in relation to accusations of that sort”.
Meanwhile, a raft of Sinn Féin cumanns in the homebase of Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín have signed a motion calling for members to be given a free vote on the issue of the Eighth Amendment.
Mr Tóibín, who is against repealing the Eighth, faces the prospect of being ejected from the party in the coming months if a majority of members support the leadership’s view that abortion should be permitted where a woman’s life or health is a risk, or in cases of fatal foetal abnormality or rape.