PoliticsAnalysis

Sinn Féin’s handling of sexual abuse a recurring issue for the party

Party’s silent approach fails to prevent the difficult questions being asked

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald promises that 'We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again.' Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald promises that 'We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again.' Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
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Pat Leahy Political Editor
Tue Oct 08 2024 - 06:00

Budget done, election looming and Sinn Féin finds itself in the midst of another political crisis, hounded for answers about a sex abuse scandal. It is becoming a recurring problem.

So far, the party is scrambling to find credible answers in the North about its former press officer Michael McMonagle – who is facing child sex abuse charges – and the references supplied to him by party figures. But that’s unlikely to be sustainable.

South of the Border, it was trying to keep its head down. But that became impossible, and party president Mary Lou McDonald issued a statement on Monday saying she had ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures” within the party.

“We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she promised.

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But questions about how the party conducted itself are likely to continue until they have been answered. As Belfast Telegraph journalist Sam McBride told the BBC’s Stephen Nolan on Monday morning, these were reasonable questions and reasonable people expected answers.

The political impact on Sinn Féin in the Republic comes in two ways. There’s the stink of the affair itself and then there’s the fact that it prevents the party from talking about the issues it wants to talk about.

This weekend, Sinn Féin should have been talking about housing, and about how last week’s budget represented a short-term bribe for voters. But that couldn’t be done, to any effect. Because they don’t want to be asked questions that they can’t or don’t want to answer.

So the party – as it did when it emerged that its former councillor Jonathan Dowdall was in fact a gangster pal of Gerry “the Monk” Hutch – goes to ground. Questions remain unanswered; the supply of Sinn Féin TDs on the Leinster House plinth dries up. At some point, these things always come down to a series of questions about who knew what and when.

Sinn Féin claims it did not know that McMonagle – whom it removed in June 2022 – was subsequently working for the British Heart Foundation. This is despite the fact that two senior party officials, Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley, had given him references.

The foundation raised those references with an as yet unidentified “senior HR” person in the party a year ago. The two officials were sacked in the past two weeks, the party says.

A visibly uncomfortable Roscommon TD Claire Kerrane was asked on RTÉ at the weekend where this HR officer was now. “I don’t know,” she replied.

When did they resign? “I don’t know.”

During the period when Sinn Féin says it did not know that McMonagle was working with the British Heart Foundation, he still had his Sinn Féin pass to get into Stormont. And he attended at least one event at Stormont, where he was part of a small delegation and was pictured within touching distance of Michelle O’Neill. She says she didn’t notice him – despite him previously being part of her personal staff.

He attended a photocall with Sinn Féin Junior Minister Aisling Reilly. Nobody noticed him.

He also attended an event in Westminster with Sinn Féin representatives, including MPs Paul Maskey and John Finucane. Again, nobody noticed.

It may be true, if unlikely, that nobody in Sinn Féin noticed that the press officer accompanying the British Heart Foundation to its various events was the same press officer that until recently worked for the party and then was fired because he was being investigated for child sex abuse.

Whether people believe that or not – and O’Neill told the Assembly at Stormont on Monday that she could understand if they didn’t – it will inevitably remind people of the cover-ups in the Liam Adams and Máiría Cahill cases.

Failures to protect children and to deal with complaints of child sex abuse in Sinn Féin and the republican movement have already been laid bare in books by Cahill and by Aoife Grace Moore in recent years. In both cases, those failures went right to the top of the party.

So this controversy will prompt more questions about the culture of the party – the secrecy, the military-style discipline, the loyalty to the party line above all – that Sinn Féin hoped voters had put aside. The culture – an understandable inheritance from the past, when the party was the political wing of a terrorist organisation dedicated to the overthrow of the State and the unification of the island by violent means – has often been a political advantage during the rise of Sinn Féin and its march towards power in Dublin. It is certainly often envied by its rivals.

But it can also mean that people prioritise the party over everything; protecting the party is more important than telling the truth, or protecting victims of wrongdoing.

This is an age where voters expect openness and transparency in many things. Dealing with child sexual abuse is certainly one of them.