Exclusive Mary Lou McDonald interview
Mary Lou McDonald on ‘undemocratic’ coalition discussions, a desire for change, women in politics, online abuse, family life, food and... Joe Exotic
‘FF and FG took a strategic decision to keep us out’ ‘The numbers don’t add up for anyone’
BESIDE Mary Lou McDonald’s small desk in her office in Leinster House is a very comfortable-looking black leather recliner chair. There was a similar one here when it was Gerry Adams’s office, but it wasn’t this one.
To her surprise, Mr Adams took his with him when he moved office and assumed his more subdued role as a backbench TD prior to his retirement.
Ms McDonald jokes that she lost the argument about trying to reclaim it, with Mr Adams insisting he needed it for his bad back and that he, unlike Mary Lou, had been shot, referring to the assassination attempt by the Ulster Defence Association in 1984, shortly after he became party president.
She decided she wasn’t going to win the argument and ordered a new one.
Metaphorically, this was probably a good thing: Mr Adams had been sitting in Sinn Féin’s top chair for almost 35 years. The incoming party president was arriving with new plans, new ideologies and a new mindset for the party. And a new chair... In a similar vein, on the wall behind her is a picture of a stiletto containing a quote from Marilyn Monroe: ‘The girl in the right shoes can conquer the world.’
Taking over at the helm of Sinn Féin after Mr Adams’s reign brought with it a motif that she was ‘stepping into big shoes’.
‘I brought my own shoes, because I think you can only walk in your own shoes,’ she says. ‘So my friends gave me that picture.
‘I thought it was a nice present so I put it up on the wall to remind myself that you walk this political journey, you have to kind of find your own rhythm and find your own way.’
As for conquering the world, Ms McDonald insists she only has domestic ambitions.
A female Taoiseach is ‘long overdue’, she says, and ‘the time is right now for a woman to assume the head of Government’.
Ms McDonald is quick to say that ‘this isn’t about me, some crazed career ambition. This political life for me has always been, and will always be, about pursuing things that I believe are fundamentally important and changing the country that we live in for the better.
‘I hope now that girls and women can look to the political system and at least see some reflection of themselves.’
The policy of keeping Sinn Féin from power could be nearing its end as current government formation talks look destined for the rocks.
This week, calm heads in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael worked to repair the damage of a tumultuous weekend that saw an ‘election plot’ emerge, disappear and leave a lasting stain on relations between the two parties, who are trying to bury the hatchet and form a Government.
By Wednesday, talk of a heave on Green Party leader Eamon Ryan had emerged, fu rther reducing the likelihood that we can expect white smoke from the chimney of Agricultural House, where the negotiations are taking place, by the end of the month. The ‘blanket refusal’ to engage with Sinn Féin is not ‘a sustainable position’ and one that will face increased public scrutiny should the current talks collapse, according to Ms McDonald.
Two Fianna Fáil TDs — John McGuinness and Eamon Ó Cuiv — have both publicly stated that Sinn Féin should be brought to the negotiating table. It’s something Ms McDonald says echoes what ‘a substantial portion of [Fianna Fáil’s] own grassroots think’.
Sitting in her fifth floor office in LH 2000, the modern wing of Leinster House, Ms McDonald still holds the burning ambition of assuming the office of Taoiseach, something that many political commentators would have regarded as fantasy before February’s election.
Events this week have brought her ambition closer to reality and reinforced Ms McDonald’s view that keeping Sinn Féin away from Government formation discussions is ‘undemocratic’ and ‘not a sustainable position’.
‘The election was, I think, an electizon like no other,’ she says. ‘I mean, it really struck me as we were going around from county to county and meeting people, the people were ahead of the political establishment and not for the first time.
‘People were saying to me, we want change and this is where we want change. It wasn’t airy-fairy, pie-in-the-sky stuff.
‘They were also saying, and by the way, we expect that you will lead this, we expect that you will be in Government to deliver it.
‘So I’ve been clear from the getgo that we were elected by over half a million people to be in Government. This wasn’t a protest vote. This was a vote for change.
‘I’m also very certain that a Government that doesn’t have Sinn Féin in it, Sinn Féin leading it, won’t have the capacity to deliver the type of change that people had such a hunger for. I also know that the numbers are messy. I was very clear on on our part before the election, during it and afterwards, that that we will speak to everybody because I think that’s the thing that adults do.
‘I think it’s the democratic and the fair thing to do.
‘I know that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have taken a different stance. From from very early on, once the votes were counted and the seats were filled, they took a strategic decision to keep us out and that’s really what binds them together.
‘It’s that instinct to keep us at arm’s length and to keep us out of Government. And that too, was about stopping the kind of change that people were telling me in the course of the election was needed and the change that I think is still so desperately needed.
‘So what’s the answer? The answer is a stable Government.
‘How does that come about? Well, at the moment, the numbers don’t
‘Refusal to even speak to us keeps everybody back’
add up for anyone. I still believe that there is the basis for a Government of change, with Sinn Féin in it, Sinn Féin driving it. But I know that that that effort has been frustrated by the fact that two blocks say they won’t talk to a party that almost a quarter of the electorate voted for.’
Another election is out of the question on public health grounds, with the prospect of putting polling booths in nursing homes or having an election campaign being highly questionable.
‘At a time where our absolute priority and duty is to keep people safe and keep people alive [in nursing homes], I just don’t think that’s a runner,’ says Ms McDonald. ‘We’re in a public health emergency and, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how you have an election in those circumstances. How do you safely invite people to campaign? How do you safely invite people out to vote? How does that happen?
‘I’m not sure if there is a public appetite for an election at this point in time, I don’t know. But I’m very sure that an election now isn’t a practical or a safe alternative.
‘People gave their view and they gave the parties and independents a mandate. The job now is to deliver what we all accept was a mandate of change.
‘Then the question is, what does a Government of change look like? Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together are not that, they’re the opposite of change.’
In the absence of another election, collaboration could soon be the only solution to the current political impasse that has left the country with a caretaker government and unelected ministers for 105 days.
‘I think refusal to engage, to acknowledge or to speak to us, obviously keeps everybody back,’ says Ms McDonald. ‘That’s not a healthy or a democratic thing to do. We have issues with other political parties, there’s political rivalries, there are different political ideas and priorities — all of that is in the mix.
‘But at the end of the day, when you go to the electorate and you ask the people to make the call, they mediate and they decide what the balance of forces are. Then you have to embrace that, you have to deal with it.
‘So to deliberately say that you will not even speak to the party that almost a quarter of the electorate voted for, to my mind is indefensible. I mean, it’s just a wrong position.
‘It’s also not a sustainable position and I know it’s a position that has caused great offense and annoyance for the many, many people, hundreds of thousands, who voted for us.’
One of the main groups that got behind the party was childcare workers, for whom Ms McDonald has become something of a champion. She has promised the poorly paid, and now evidentially essential, workers better pay and more job security should her party get into power, with a plan to make childcare part of the public service within a decade.
In early February a protest that saw thousands of childcare workers take to the streets of the capital coincided with a political storm for Sinn Féin.
The event at the party’s offices on Parnell Square was besieged by reporters, who gathered for a hastily arranged opportunity to question Ms McDonald, as pressure mounted over remarks made by Sinn Féin’s Finance spokesperson in Stormont, Conor Murphy. He falsely suggested that Paul Quinn — who was murdered in 2007 in Co Armagh after being involved in a row with the son of a senior IRA figure — was involved in criminality.
Within minutes of Ms McDonald appearing at the doorstep, the noise of the protesting childcare workers began to drown out any questions and answers.
The childcare sector was ‘under incredible pressure’ long before the Covid crisis hit. In December, Ms McDonald points out, an emergency payment was required in order to stop a large cohort of providers going under due to crippling insurance costs.
Ms McDonald wants the sector to become a public service, that would allow for security for the current 27,000 workers, and provide a
‘I will never take things for granted again’ ‘You have to become resilient at some level’
career structure and better pay to entice more into the underresourced sector.
The failure to provide longpromised childcare to frontline workers during the pandemic ‘can be done’, despite Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying the insurance obstacle for childcare workers entering the homes of frontline workers is unworkable.
‘We can’t have a re-run, again, of a scheme announced and a scheme collapsing if that was to happen for families right across the state,’ she says. ‘That would be absolutely catastrophic. That would be chaotic.’
Having an adoring crowd of thousands of childcare workers come to your rescue is one way to pacify a media storm. That day she joined the march and was mobbed by adoring fans seeking selfies and a moment to express their gratitude. The level of adoration she receives is unrivalled by any other politician.
However, legacy issues like Mr Adams’s refusal to admit he was a member of the IRA will undoubtably continue to dog the party in its pursuit of power until they are openly addressed. It’s a legacy that Ms McDonald is keen to leave behind, presenting herself as head of the new, widely acceptable face of Sinn Féin. But she’s also keen to remember those who have gone before her.
On her desk is a framed picture of Ms McDonald and her health spokesperson Louise O’Reilly TD in Santa hats, all smiles. Beside it is a copy of Martin McGuinness: The Man I Knew by Jude Collins. Today, would have been Mr McGuinness’s 70th birthday.
On the shelf beside her desk, historian Diarmaid Ferriter’s weighty book The Border lays on top of Una Mullally’s anthology Repeal the 8th, a movement Ms McDonald was at the foreground of. They sit among a sea of get well soon cards from well-wishers following her recent Covid-19 illness.
Ms McDonald studied English Literature at Trinity College but admits she doesn’t get to read as much as she’d like now. She recently picked up Wuthering Heights again, having not read it in a long time.
‘I don’t get to read nearly as much as I want to so you dip in and out of things,’ she says. ‘I had hoped that in lockdown I might get a bit more space to actually do some reading, but that hasn’t materialised just yet.’
She has a broad taste in music and ‘likes a bit of everything’ ranging from Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan to Christy Moore and Abba.
As our photographer shuttles her around the office taking pictures and our videographer sets up, our ears prick up when among the background noise we overhear Joe Duffy proclaim ‘Mary Lou McDonald’ on Liveline during a segment on US President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. There’s a brief smile from Ms McDonald before we continue.
At the other end of the room, on the long meeting table, lies a metal artefact, a version of the claddagh made by a friend of hers who sadly died in the past year.
On the wall above her desk there is a framed picture from her local St Vincent’s GAA Club, as well as a framed Easter lily bearing the words ‘tiocfaidh ar lá’ from her local cumann in her Dublin Central
constituency. Ms McDonald’s use of ‘tiocfaidh ar lá’ in her maiden speech as President of Sinn Féin at the party’s Ard Fheis in 2018 drew sharp criticisms from those outside the party who felt it was a hark back to the violent past of the Republican movement and the IRA.
It was something she stressed was not the case at the time and said on the Late Late Show that it referred to a vision of a ‘new Ireland’ and that ‘I am a republican leader, addressing a republican audience and I’m doing that in a way that is very much about now and very modern’.
The ‘new normal’ brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to Ms McDonald getting to spend more time at home with her family.
She now does more cooking as a result, admitting that her husband would have previously been tasked with this daily duty for her two teenage sons. She says she operates a ‘versatile’ menu in the kitchen and could cook anything from a curry to a lasagne, bangers and mash to bacon and cabbage. She concedes, however, that her skills do not rival those of her housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin, who regularly shares his latest culinary adventures on social media.
More home time means she has been able to provide ‘incredible homeschooling’ to her sons as well as binging on some box sets, although she hasn’t yet indulged in one of the most talked-about shows of lockdown, Netflix’s Tiger King.
‘They’ve been watching different things, the thing about your man Joey, Joe Exotic, about that zoo. Now I drew the line at that, I said I’m not watching that, it was a crazy thing. Some unfortunate had their arm bitten off by a lion or something. ‘When I go home, I like to lock my door and I have my domestic life. I’m mammy when I’m at home with two teenage children so a lot of my time is about just keeping things in order, being with my family, being with my friends.
‘I’m a very kind of simple person in many ways. I like good company and I like to go for a walk, I like a good laugh, I like an open fire. I’ve actually quite a simple life.’
Ms McDonald says she doesn’t know what her sons’ thoughts are on her work but despite rarely agreeing with her at home, she hopes her values rub off on them.
‘They certainly have their own sense of things and their own strong ideas. They rarely agree with me on anything if that’s any indication. They’re quite opinionated, which I think is good.
‘They’re obviously coming up in a household that has values around social justice and equality, and obviously we’re a united Ireland,
a republican household. So I would hope that that influences where they stand, but I wouldn’t presume to speak for them on any issue. I can assure you they have their own minds.’
Ms McDonald has been at the centre of coronavirus coverage. Her two sons attend the Dublin school which had the first confirmed case and she subsequently contracted the virus which left her unwell for a number of weeks.
‘I think on the one hand, we’ve scaled up capacity sufficiently, and people have responded incredibly well to big asks of them and to stay at home, to stay apart from loved ones,’ she says.
‘Maybe all of us take things for granted. I will never take for granted again the simple things like having a cup of tea with somebody, you know, and visiting my mother, I haven’t seen her in... I mean, I see her every day, but I haven’t physically seen her now for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I know I’m no different to anyone else.’
She admits that political life is ‘daunting’ and full of downsides — putting posters of your face on lampposts and asking the public to judge you is not for everyone.
The devastation of losing elections is only ever ‘counterbalanced’ by the elation of being elected. ‘It’s busy, it’s demanding, you are hired and you are fired very publicly.’
Women in public life find themselves at the brunt of more abusive comments online and she points to it as a factor for turning some women away from politics.
‘I think social media is a brilliant thing, fantastic platforms to communicate with people and to get information out there. But it can be kind of rough going too and women can get disproportionate attention, negative, very gendered, sometimes just downright abusive commentaries.’
Ms McDonald admits that when she was younger ‘very personalised criticisms’ had an impact on her. ‘Of course they knock you because it’s just bad manners, it’s just ignorant, but also it makes you question, what am I doing here? Because I’m here to do politics, I’m here to discuss the issues that matter, I’m here to give you my ideas. It doesn’t matter what I sound like or what I look like.
‘So, I can understand, particularly for women coming new to political life, that that can be quite wounding and it can knock people off balance.
‘But I also take the view that you have to become resilient at some level, not to let commentary like that win out. It’s difficult and then, of course, people need to behave themselves and watch their manners in terms of public commentary on other people.
‘I’m at a stage now where I ignore all of that. I have to confess it wouldn’t have an effect on me.’
In the Dáil chamber two weeks ago, Mr Varadkar launched what some perceived as a personalised attack on Ms McDonald. ‘I think it was a diversion from actually dealing with the issue because, subsequent to that exchange, we’re still hearing mixed messages from the Government about how they propose to support huge sections of the workforce who are out of work now, not because of any fault of their own, but because we’ve been hit with this deadly virus.’
Asked if personalised or abusive commentary ever made her consider walking away from politics she is defiant.
‘No. Never. I don’t give up.’