The riposte that pushed Sinn Fein to the fore
With one riposte, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald may have changed the course of Irish history.
It was debate night in the middle of the general election campaign, and rival party leaders Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin were attacking her party’s tax-and-spend promises.
“Listening to these men you’d never imagine that one had crashed the economy and that the other is so fiscally irresponsible that he’s producing the most expensive hospital in the world,” McDonald witheringly told them, drawing wild applause from the audience.
The campaign was transformed and, in the February 8 election, Sinn Fein won the popular vote, putting the party on the cusp of power south of the border for the first time.
For Sinn Fein, it was a vindication of its decision to choose McDonald, A privately educated woman from an affluent corner of Dublin, to replace Gerry Adams. That was a decisive break with the party’s Northern Irish, blue collar roots, with its deep ties to the IRA.
Born on May Day 1969, McDonald comes from Rathgar, an affluent district in South Dublin.
Her father was a builder and member of Fianna Fail, but her grandmother, Molly, was the key figure in shaping her politics, according to Deagln de Bradn’s 2015 book, Power Play: The Rise of Modern Sinn Fein. Molly’s brother opposed the treaty which split Ireland in 1921, and was executed in the Civil War that followed, de Bradn wrote.
McDonald was not yet a teenager when Bobby Sands, an IRA member on hunger strike, died in 1981. The strike captured global attention when IRA prisoners led by Sands refused to eat. The men wanted the UK to classify them as political prisoners, not criminals, a demand rejected by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
His death at age 27 sparked riots and fuelled a surge of nationalist sentiment across Northern Ireland. That inspired the IRA’s ally, Sinn Fein, to contest elections in the 1980s as part of a strategy known as the “Armalite and the Ballot Box”.
McDonald later said that, for her, the hunger strikes were a “road to Damascus ‘moment’.”
Initially, though, McDonald followed the standard path for many in South Dublin. She attended a feepaying school, studied English at Trinity College, worked in think-tanks and joined Fianna Fail.
By the late 1990s, she had joined Sinn Fein and quickly rose through the ranks as the party sought to broaden its appeal, and calm voter concerns about its historic links to the IRA terror group.
At times, she’s struggled to keep a lid on the party’s more militant side as she tried to broaden its support.
The party itself has been taken by surprise by its swift rise, and many analysts are struggling to explain how exactly McDonald turned it around.
After the debate, she overtook Varadkar and Martin as the most popular leader, polls show, and is in the race to be prime minister, as the various parties eye coalition options.