Sinn Fein Ardfheis: Sinn Féin is "not about to go away", the party's ardfheis was told as it opened last night. "We are here to stay," said European election candidate for Dublin Ms Mary Lou McDonald.
"We are the ordinary people of Tallaght, the ordinary people of Derry, Belfast, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Wexford, Cork and Kerry, and all across this island, and we have a vision for the future."
In the opening address of the three-day conference at the RDS, the Sinn Féin Dublin candidate was running neck and neck with Labour and Fine Gael in the city.
The party's European election candidate in Derry, Ms Bairbre de Brun, said other parties worked on the ground to get elected, but Sinn Féin got elected to work on the ground.
Ms de Brun, a former Northern Ireland Minister for Health, said Sinn Féin would bring an "added value" to the EU, and would place "our all-Ireland agenda at the heart of the EU.
"We are the only political party who organise on an all-Ireland basis, at every level of government and in every political institution on the island. We are the only party standing and intending to elect MEPs North and South of the island."
Ms McDonald said it was "remarkable that exactly 10 years ago this week the same denunciations, the same unsubstantiated and unfounded attacks on Sinn Féin that are dominating the headlines this week were taking place then".
A decade ago the people of Tallaght and Killinarden were subjected to a "vicious and sustained onslaught" against their decision to allow Sinn Féin to hold its ardfheis in the Killinarden Community Centre.
Sinn Féin rejected the status quo and the "lazy self-serving, self-promoting egomaniac politics of Fianna Fáil and the PDs, Fine Gael and the Labour Party in the South, and the DUP, UUP and SDLP in the North who think they have fooled the people of this island into believing there is no alternative".
Describing Government TDs and the "alternative coalition" parties of Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens as "Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee", Ms McDonald said Sinn Féin had "already forced dramatic changes across all 32 counties of Ireland".
She said Sinn Féin was returned in the elections as the largest nationalist/republican party and the largest pro-Belfast Agreement party. "It happened because the people support our vision for the future."
