Future of Adams as SF leader causes rift... as ‘ancien regime’ loses its grip
A SPLIT is developing in the normally unified ranks of Sinn Féin, over when Gerry Adams will quit as president of the party.
Speculation has been growing over his future after Cavan branch head Thomas Anthony McNulty said he was holding back the party’s expansion south of the border.
The party spokesman on Housing Planning and Local Government, Eoin Ó Broin, told the MacGill Summer School that there would be no change in the next two years. ‘However, is it likely to happen in the next five years? I think that’s quite possible.’
But, in a rare sign of uncertainty, close supporters of Mr Adams have told the restive young members they may have to wait a further decade for a new leader.
One senior figure warned: ‘There is no way Gerry can go until Brexit is concluded and that will take a minimum of six years.’
Another figure close to the Adams wing added: ‘Brexit could be followed by a border poll. This is going to be a turbulent decade in terms of where Ireland goes next. Gerry will be going nowhere until that’s sorted.’
The Sinn Féin leader has dismissed speculation about his future, noting: ‘I’m not as foolish as Enda; he did actually put a time-frame on it and then had to claw back from it.’
However, Mr Adams’s hold on his fractious southern deputies may be far more insecure than the Sinn Féin leader thinks. A source told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘A number of new and secondterm TDs are openly complaining about his regime and how it is time he went.
‘The openness and the personnel are quite surprising – they are not people you would normally associate with bad thoughts but they clearly believe that a glass ceiling now exists where Sinn Féin cannot progress under Gerry.’
The source added: ‘They are quite scathing about Gerry’s failings and they are anxious that this message gets out – they just don’t know how to do it. But Gerry and the “ancien regime” are quite clearly not fully in control of them any more.’