Worlds Apart

Sanctioned for links with the IRA, yet wooed by Dublin's business community, Sinn Féin presented two conflicting faces this week, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent

Bright and early last Wednesday in Dublin's Burlington Hotel, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams stood before the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and purred. The influential business group, chaired by Ulster Bank executive David Pierce, ever conscious of the political winds of change, purred right back.

"There were some comments that I was a bit bad-tempered yesterday in some of my interviews. I have to confess that I had a wisdom tooth removed. And I went from there straight into yesterday's developments, so if you will bear with me," he told the 200-strong audience.

However, Adams had more than a wisdom tooth worrying him following Tuesday's publication of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report.

Sitting in Dublin's Windmill Lane studio on Tuesday evening, the Sinn Féin leader had shown a different, and darker, mood from that displayed to Dublin's business elite. Furious about the IMC's recommendations of sanctions against Sinn Féin, he rounded bitterly on RTÉ's Charlie Bird as he waited to appear on RTÉ's Six One News. During the altercation, heard by RTÉ staff on a live "link" back in Donnybrook, Adams complained about Bird's earlier interview with Bertie Ahern on the IMC report.

Sinn Féin has been doing a lot of complaining this week about the four-strong IMC, complaining that it is a poodle of the British intelligence services. The body, set up last year, is made up of Joe Brosnan, former secretary general of the Department of Justice; Dick Kerr, former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency; John Grieve, former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; and Lord John Alderdice, former speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Regardless of Sinn Féin's complaints, the IMC is no poodle, since the tone of the 50-page document came as a surprise, even in some quarters in Dublin and London. Much of its information is not new, though the placement of an official stamp on charges that the IRA and other terrorist organisations are still as active as ever is damaging.

The scale of that activity has shocked some in official circles. Between 1991 and 1994, loyalists and republicans were involved in 663 shootings and assaults. Between 1999 and 2002, that figure had doubled, to 1,119, with 721 of them carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force and other loyalist groups and 398 blamed on republicans.

Worryingly for Sinn Féin, the IMC will "not go away", as it intends to produce another report on paramilitary activity levels in October. Although some reports suggest that the IMC may next time name leading Sinn Féin figures sitting on the IRA army council, the commission has made no decision to do so yet.

However, it has the potential to spark a further round of damaging headlines for Sinn Féin as it will delve further into the IRA's purely criminal activity, and there is enough of that around to keep the IMC busy. In particular, the commission is set to investigate the involvement of senior Republicans along the Border in multi-million-euro illegal dumping operations, in which rubbish from the Republic gets buried in the North.

The question now is whether the published IMC criticisms, mirroring those made by Bertie Ahern and the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, will hinder the party's progress in the Republic.

Insisting that it will not, Sinn Féin general secretary Robbie Smyth believes that the party's 220 local election candidates, which include TD Martin Ferris's daughter, Toireasa, in Co Kerry, have the wind in their sails.

"We're not paranoid," he says. "Within the party it has strengthened people's resolve. I'm not just saying that. You can see people thinking: 'I'll do more, I'll work harder.' People are very angry. They think that we are being treated unfairly."

Every other party, however, believes Sinn Féin has been given the softest of rides.

In February, the Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll showed Sinn Féin standing at 12 per cent, compared with the 6.5 per cent of the first-preference vote it received in the last general election. Just as significantly, Sinn Féin is now at least as popular amongst 25- to 34-year-olds as it is among 18- to 24-year-olds, who are the least likely to bother to go to the polling booths.

Sinn Féin's claims that Fianna Fáil is out to get it, though not entirely wrong, will convince some, but not all, voters in the coming weeks.

"The criticism of Fianna Fáil isn't fair," says one non-Fianna Fáil source, deeply involved in the Peace Process. "John Hume wasn't the only one to know that bringing Sinn Féin in from the cold would be a threat. Successive taoisigh down here knew it too. They knew that every time they had Gerry Adams on the steps of Government Buildings that that was legitimising Sinn Féin. But it was still done and it will continue to be done in the wider interest."

Sinn Féin has found political life tougher in the Republic since late autumn, following McDowell's decision to go on the offensive against it. The Taoiseach joined in shortly afterwards. Though he was subtler, Ahern's knife still managed to find its way home.

"I trailed this for months. The answer from Sinn Féin and others was: 'Produce the evidence.' The evidence was produced," said Ahern on Thursday.

The McDowell charges, based on his "I know what I know" philosophy, were initially treated with scorn by Sinn Féin, though the IMC validation makes them much more credible.

In attacking Sinn Féin, McDowell had two targets in mind: Sinn Féin itself and Fine Gael, whose "law and order" support could be attracted to the Progressive Democrats.

"McDowell has been very clever," says one Fianna Fáil strategist. "Sinn Féin broke out of the box in the North last November because they attracted the votes of young middle-class Catholics. He has been trying to send the message to equivalent voters down here: 'Stay away from them. They're like crack cocaine. They're bad for you.' "

Another source says: "There are a lot of people out there looking for a home for their vote if they want to give Fianna Fáil a kicking. This may give them pause for thought."

Sinn Féin's local election candidates will stand, or fall, on the party's own first-preference share of the vote and transfers from left-wing parties. However, the party's best hope for a European seat, Dublin's Mary Lou McDonald, needs middle-class votes that would otherwise go to Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, or at least their transfers.

McDonald, according to a number of witnesses, stumbled badly at a recent anti-war rally when hecklers put her under pressure about "Sinn Féin's own army". She had to be "rescued" by Socialist Workers Party figure Richard Boyd-Barrett, they said.

The party's vocal stand in Dáil Éireann against the citizenship referendum is likely to cause it difficulties if repeated on the doorsteps in many urban communities. So far, it is not yet clear whether all Sinn Féin candidates will be quite so vocal while canvassing, though party headquarters is promising a leaflet drop.

Robbie Smyth concedes that the IMC report could be a negative factor.

"It would be wrong to say that we don't think that it could have a negative impact in June," he says. "Would we have grown more? Nobody will ever know. We're doing well. Otherwise they would not be attacking us.

"In some senses we have always been outside the political mainstream, but this is the end of it. After this election, people will have to talk to us about what we think about housing, social welfare, education."

Meeting hours after the IMC report's publication, the businessmen and women gathered in the Burlington Hotel did not recoil in horror at its findings. Working on the principle "that the past is a foreign land", the business community has clearly chosen to forget the difficulties it has had with the Republican community.

Danuta Gray, chief executive of O2 Ireland, questioned Adams, for example, about his opinions on a future all-Ireland telecommunications policy. However, she made no mention of the not too distant days when the senior management of O2 were viciously threatened by Sinn Féin and IRA figures about the erection of mobile telephone masts along the Border.

Although Adams's prepared speech was interesting and polished, his subsequent replies in a 20-minute question-and-answer session were even more so. Displaying the more complex colours emerging in Sinn Féin's attitude to business, Adams's background message was that his party understands the need for pragmatism.

Asked about public-private partnerships, he acknowledged that Martin McGuinness had reluctantly accepted the need for private investment while in power in Northern Ireland.

"Well, we are against them," he said. "Having said that, Martin McGuinness, as education minister, faced with the reality that he would either have no schools or an involvement in a qualified way with private finance, went for it. So I suppose you could argue that that is the emergence of pragmatic politics."

Equally, Sinn Féin's acceptance of service charges in Sligo was justified by Adams, despite all of the party's railings nationally against such bills.

"Sinn Féin councillors in Sligo, rather than seeing the service go entirely over to privatisation, and seeing the aged, or people on low incomes, suffering, then went for a more pragmatic approach. The same thing has happened in Monaghan. Our position is against it. But in terms of the actual practicalities of working out these matters, as part of local government, the party made compromises on it," he told the gathering.

On taxation, Adams offered soothing words that meant little: "I am reluctant to say that we would do A or we would do B. We are not in principle against tax increases, but we have no plans to introduce them. We just think that there should be a far, far better way of doing business."