Laois councillor Caroline Dwane Stanley has announced she is resigning from Sinn Féin “due to it not being a safe place”.
The wife of former party TD Brian Stanley, who is now an Independent deputy, issued a statement on Friday evening on her Facebook page.
The councillor said she resigned from Sinn Féin with immediate effect. “In my 27 years of membership, I worked diligently to advance the objectives of the party. I met and worked with some great republicans on that journey and will always cherish those memories.
“I have given this careful consideration and reflection over the recent past and decided to resign my membership of Sinn Féin.”
Miriam Lord’s review of the year: Shock resignations, ruptured relations and an over-eager new Taoiseach
25 ways to improve your health in 2025: Shop less, sleep more and keep a good work-life balance
Film officials warned ‘wholly inappropriate’ Joker sequel could cause ‘significant harm’ to children
Husband and wife die following ‘hit-and-run’ incident in Blanchardstown
At the general election count in Laois in early December, Cllr Dwane-Stanley said the previous few months had been “hell” for her husband and the family. At the time, she said she would refuse to resign from Sinn Féin until she “gets answers” from senior members regarding the debacle that led to his resignation.
Last week, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the party will speak to Cllr Dwane-Stanley in the new year, saying “there are issues there that need to get ironed out”.
In an interview with the Journal, Ms McDonald said: “Let everybody have their down time and their family time, and then we’ll talk to Caroline in the new year.”
Ms Dwane Stanley was a Sinn Féin councillor for Portlaoise since 2011, co-opted onto the council following her husband’s election to the Dáil.
In the immediate aftermath of her husband’s resignation from the party, Sinn Féin nominated her to be their sole representative on the Committee of the Regions, an EU advisory body representing local and regional government.
Mr Stanley resigned in October amid controversy over the handling of an internal investigation into allegations against him.
Ms McDonald said subsequently that the party had done everything it had been obliged to do in hearing the complaint of sexual harassment made by a woman against Mr Stanley and also in relation to the counter-allegation made by Mr Stanley that the woman had demanded a sum of €60,000 from him in order not to pursue matters further.
When Mr Stanley resigned as a Sinn Féin member he said he had been subjected to a seriously flawed complaints procedures and described it as being like a “kangaroo court”. He strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
Ms Dwane Stanley said that given how the party leadership dealt with the “controversy that arose in July and related matters since then including outright attacks on both me personally and my family by some local party members, I have come to the conclusion that Laois Sinn Féin is not a safe place to be.
“I had hoped that the party at leadership level would have made the effort to engage with me directly and give some support and assistance to me to try and deal with these matters. However, no contact has been made by the leadership with me over the past five months.”
She said that while Sinn Féin has always prided itself on the values of equality and in particular supports for women in politics, “in my case this has proven to be a fallacy. With this in mind I have decided that the time is right for me to draw a line on 2024 and resign, look to the future and embrace what I hope will be a better political future in the time ahead. I will continue in my role as an independent republican councillor providing vigorous and effective representation for the Portlaoise/Abbeyleix Municipal District.”
Mr Stanley was elected as an Independent TD in the recent general election, leaving Sinn Féin without a TD in the area for the first time since 2011. In the end, he pipped his former party’s candidate Maria McCormack to a seat by a margin of almost 3,000 votes. Ms McCormack will now run as a Seanad candidate for the party on the Labour vocational panel.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
