Mary Lou is a top politician but damaged by association
MARY Lou McDonald is one of the most engaged and impressive politicians in Leinster House.
The Dublin Central TD is rarely off her game and unlike many of her colleagues never turns up unprepared.
That’s not an assessment you might expect to read in the media but it’s a strongly held personal view.
This week she seized on any bit of loose information left hanging by the Garda Commissioner at the Public Accountants Committee.
Her performance on the committee over the years has been standout.
But there is something of a contradiction in the way Ms McDonald holds the Government, State agencies and garda chiefs to account.
She doesn’t seem to apply the same standard to some of her party colleagues.
On ‘Newstalk Breakfast’ yesterday she said she had “no inkling” of the crimes committed by former councillor Jonathan Dowdall.
Dowdall is awaiting sentence in the Special Criminal Court for waterboarding a man, threatening to chop him up, feed him to the dogs and burn his head at the stake. During the savage attack, victim Alexander Hurley was told he was a “stupid dumb f*** to mess with the head of the IRA” and that Dowdall was a friend of Ms McDonald. No doubt the Sinn Féin deputy didn’t know what Dowdall was capable of but it does beg the question of who she allows herself to be surrounded by.
When the ‘good republican’ Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy was on trial in the same court for tax evasion, Ms McDonald said he was “a very typical rural man” and “very nice”.
She hit out at the non-jury court’s existence even though Murphy is reputed to have had the power of deciding who lived and who died in the Border region.
Yet Ms McDonald put her own solid reputation on the line to defend him.
Similarly when Gerry Adams was arrested in connection with the murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville, she declared it was “politically motivated”.
At the time Mr Adams was criticised by other parties for not immediately telling police information about child abuse by his brother, Ms McDonald accused them of trying to score political points. Ms McDonald would be a fine minister some day but she needs to avoid being dragged down by her associates.