Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The past hasn’t gone away for rising Sinn Fein
SINN Fein president Mary Lou Mcdonald captured the building air of expectation in the party last weekend at its annual conference in Dublin.
With Sinn Fein now the largest at Stormont and riding high in polls in the Republic, it seems only a matter of time before it enters government on both sides of the border.
“Change can’t be stopped,” declared Ms Mcdonald, who is considered on the cusp of becoming the first female Taoiseach.
But with popularity comes greater public scrutiny.
And one continued source of criticism has been the party’s attitude towards the violence of the Provisional IRA during the Troubles.
The latest controversy came after Ms Mcdonald said there was “no comparison” between the IRA and gangland criminals in Dublin.
She told Newstalk: “As somebody who represents the north inner city of Dublin and who has seen at first hand the corrosive damage that gangland, so-called, has caused to communities, there is absolutely no comparison.”
She added: “Things that happened in the course of a very long political conflict, which thank God is now long over – we have had 25 years of peace – there is no comparison between that and the kind of challenge, and it is an ongoing challenge to our society, that this vicious so-called gangland crime epidemic poses.”
Ms Mcdonald had been asked about Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Fein councillor who last month was sentenced to four years in prison for facilitating a murder in 2016.
The party leader said she was “profoundly shocked” to learn of his involvement but insisted gangland criminality was not comparable to the IRA.
To many it is baffling not to acknowledge any similarities. Indeed, the spectre of the IRA was used as a threat in the course of Dowdall’s own criminality.
When Dowdall was convicted of interrogating, threatening and waterboarding a man in 2015, a court heard his victim was told he was “stupid” to “mess with the IRA”.
Ms Mcdonald’s remarks have faced criticism from relatives of IRA victims and political opponents.
Irish government chief whip, Fianna Fail’s Jack Chambers, accused Sinn Fein of trying to “sanitise” the past.
Fine Gael minister Heather Humphreys said of Ms Mcdonald’s remarks: “That concerns me seriously, really, because I have lived on the border region all my life.
“And I can tell you, when you talk to Breege Quinn – her son was a victim of an IRA murder – he was beaten to a pulp, where his mother couldn’t even put the rosary beads in his hand he was so badly beaten by those criminals.
“You ask her does she feel any different than a family that has been impacted by a gangland murder in Dublin?
“Does the family of Columba Mcveigh feel any different where he is buried in a bog in Bragan where he was murdered as a young man?” It was particularly crass timing that Ms Mcdonald’s comments came just days before the 35th anniversary of the Enniskillen bombing, an IRA atrocity in which 12 people were killed and dozens injured.
The controversy is unlikely to impact Sinn Fein’s poll ratings in the Republic, where health and housing are among voters’ main issues of concern.
But could such comments affect the party’s ability to find coalition partners to form a government after the next Dail election?
Ruling out a coalition with Sinn
Fein, Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar said any Taoiseach should be clear that killings during the Troubles were crimes.
The Tanaiste also raised economic policy differences as he told the Irish Independent: “We will not consider coalition with Sinn Fein. Oil and water doesn’t mix.”
Sinn Fein has done much work to broaden its appeal in the Republic, including last year ending its longstanding opposition to non-jury courts.
But as the party’s path to power draws nearer, questions over its stance on the IRA won’t be going away.