Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has criticised suggestions the party does not recognise the legitimacy of the State and Northern Ireland as two jurisdictions.
Ms McDonald said “the entire peace arrangement is built on the fact that we have two jurisdictions,” adding suggestions Sinn Féin rejected that fact was “rather silly”.
The party leader said the issue was a “frivolous distraction” from Sinn Féin’s effort to deliver “fundamental change” in politics.
Sinn Féin representatives generally use the term ‘Ireland’ to refer to the island of Ireland, and other terms to refer to the legal entities north and south, while the 1937 constitution asserts the name of the state is “Ireland”.
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Political opponents have questioned whether the party recognises the legitimacy of the State, and some figures in Fianna Fáil suggested a number of preconditions would have to be met before a future coalition with Sinn Féin was considered, including a public recognition of the current two jurisdictions.
In an interview with Gavan Reilly on Newstalk, Ms McDonald was asked about former Sinn Féin Councilllor Jonathan Dowdall (44) who was recently jailed for four years for his part in facilitating one of the most high-profile gangland murders in the country, at the Regency Hotel.
Asked whether Dowdall’s involvement with the party was an indication of wider links to criminality that were a hangover from the Troubles, Ms McDonald said that there is “no comparison” between “things that happened in the course of a very long political conflict” and the “ongoing challenge” of the “gangland crime epidemic.”
Ms McDonald said that she first became aware of allegations against Dowdall six years ago, almost 12 months after he had left the party.
“The first I knew of any of this was when he had been arrested for a different offence. I was very, very shocked by that.
“I have to say, prior to that, he had been a person running a very successful business with very high-level contracts, employing a lot of people.”
Certainly there would’ve been no indication for me or for anybody else that he would be involved in this type of activity.”
‘Absolutely no comparison’
As regards the wider issue, Ms McDonald said that if they were going to talk about thing that happened in the course of the conflicts “that’s one thing”.
“That’s one discussion. As somebody who represents the North Inner City from Dublin, and has seen and sees at first hand the damage, the corrosive damage that so called gangland has caused to communities, there is absolutely no comparison.
“The 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 between this and the so called gangland crime epidemic poses.”
Ms McDonald said the British government needed to set out a “plan of negotiation”, with a timetable, for how issues around the North’s protocol would be resolved.
The Democratic Unionist Party were “boycotting government”, which had left Northern Ireland “in a state of limbo,” she told Newstalk’s On the Record.
“The first option and the best outcome is we get the Executive up and running,” she said.
Speaking to RTÉ's This Week programme, she said the British government needed to set out “very, very clearly” what their plan is to address the “disgraceful scenario of no government while people are struggling”.
On the ongoing political row over the operation of the Northern Irish protocol which governs trading arrangements post-Brexit, she said Europe had been willing to negotiate in an effort to address unionist fears but that “the problem has been the absence of good faith negotiations from the British”.
She indicated that she would be open to discussions on the continuation of a veto power for unionist and nationalist blocs under power sharing arrangements, as has been proposed by the Alliance Party, but said it was a “chicken and egg” scenario as the Stormont committee charged with examining reforms to the Good Friday structures could not sit in the absence of an executive being formed.
Asked about whether the party would apologise for its support for IRA violence during the Troubles, she said: “I don’t have to be coerced into recognising the hurt and the damage that the conflict in the north caused”.
“You have heard deep sorrow from republicans. The IRA made an apology to casualties in the war,” she said, adding that within Sinn Féin there was an “absolute determination that never, ever, ever again will we go back to that place (of conflict)”.
Legal threats
Ms McDonald defended individuals in her party, including herself, who had chosen to issue legal threats for defamation or initiate court cases. She confirmed that she has threatened or initiatied proceedings on three occasions, and hit back at suggestions by Taoiseach Micheál Martin that the party sought to use threats to chill public debate.
She said “cut and thrust” in politics is “good, necessary and healthy and I think it’s unfortunate the Taoiseach has made that assertion, it is wholly erroneous, it is wrong.”
“In circumstances where matters that are false, damaging to someone’s reputation or character are asserted, then that’s a different kettle of fish,” she told the programme, adding that there was a need for feedom of speech and the freedom of the media for the democratic system to operate but “people have a right as citizens to have recourse to the law”. She said it was not her intention to take an action over a book about her recently published by Shane Ross, the former cabinet minister”.
“We’re all big boys and girls,” she told the programme, adding: “there is a level of criticism that is absolutely fine, none of us are overly sensitive about that at all, but there are moments where lines are crossed”
Ms McDonald told her ardfheis that “political hokey pokey” by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will not be enough to prevent political change.
She told delegates at the RDS that the two larger coalition parties are “so joined at the hip that it doesn’t matter to them which leader is Taoiseach – so long as it’s one of them”.
“Leo leaves, Micheál goes in. Micheál leaves next month, Leo goes back in. In, out. In, out. Political hokey pokey. That’s the cosy club that has run this state for a century,” she said.
