Last Tuesday, Sinn Féin gathered in west Belfast to mourn Ted Howell, a key back room figure and adviser to the party’s former president Gerry Adams.
On a bitterly cold morning around the Tricolour-draped coffin, Howell received graveside orations from Adams and his successor, Mary Lou McDonald.
The crowd at Milltown cemetery mourning Howell, a player in the generation that brought Sinn Féin into the political mainstream, was studded with political frontliners. They included First Minister Michelle O’Neill alongside TDs Louise O’Reilly and Matt Carthy and Stormont’s Minister for the Economy Conor Murphy, who is to move South following his anticipated election to the Seanad.
This cohort, led by McDonald, will be charged with delivering the goal of Sinn Féin in government on both sides of the Border despite a bruising year and disappointing general election in the Republic in 2024.
Senior party figures say an assessment of Sinn Féin’s election last year is a matter of perspective. Despite being rocked by pre-election controversy, it increased the number of seats it holds and recovered ground relative to its drubbing in the local and European elections, they argue, consolidating its position as the main party of opposition.
They also claim less tangible wins such as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael filching its policies on mortgage interest relief and renter’s tax credits, and adopting more fleshed-out positions on Irish unity.
But this is far from the whole story. The party bled votes relative to the 2020 general election, a high watermark in popular support which looked for several years like being a springboard to government. It could be seen as a missed generational chance for the Sinn Féin project.
When studying the election outcome, one Sinn Féin strategist concedes privately: “The ultimate goal was to get into government, and from that point of view, it wasn’t a successful election.”
As it heads into the next Dáil term, Sinn Féin faces a crucial moment in its quest for growth, power and delivering on its mission of seismic change.
Sinn Féin is set to undertake a review of the 2024 general election. TDs believe the party grew into the campaign, that momentum was building and that another couple of weeks on the stump would have delivered a better result.
Comments from McDonald about a potential front bench reshuffle have set tongues wagging among senior TDs. In a pre-Christmas interview with the Sunday Times, the Dublin Central TD did not rule out moving stalwarts such as the party’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin and finance spokesman Pearse Doherty into new briefs.
That has paved the way for some internal soul-searching, including on housing, which for so long was the cornerstone of the party’s criticism of Government and seen as the foundation of its growth.
“We rolled the dice on housing and for one reason or another, maybe the electorate didn’t latch on to it,” says one senior TD.
A second frontbencher says the anger over housing has dissipated, despite ongoing voter concerns, with the Government having “normalised” failure here and also in health.
Although no TDs who spoke to The Irish Times were critical of the policies put forward by Ó Broin, there was criticism on some of the messaging – and aspects that proved vulnerable to attack from the Government. There was particular criticism of the party’s affordable housing plan which would see the State retain ownership of the land under such homes.
Some party figures believe the policy provided a soft underbelly for the Government to attack, raising questions over whether banks would finance mortgages under the model. TDs say that, politically, the policy “tied us up in knots ... and injected a degree of uncertainty in the public’s mind”.
“The Government did a really good job at muddying the waters,” says a party source. “Did we make it easier? I think we probably did. We didn’t get our points across on a number of issues.”
This included the affordable homes policy and how the party communicated its plan to phase out subsidies for first time buyers, the source says. While a party strategist believes Ó Broin is “brilliant” with figures and statistics, he added: “In the middle of a working class community, they don’t want to know facts, figures, statistics ... you have to tailor your message to those you are speaking to, and we didn’t do that well enough on housing.”
One TD privately questioned whether Ó Broin is “too bright” in his approach, crafting policies that can win the intellectual argument but which lose the political battle.
At least one frontbencher now believes the Dublin Mid-West man will be shuffled out of housing and allowed to apply his talents elsewhere, potentially in climate.
[ Pearse Doherty profile: the poster boy for Sinn FéinOpens in new window ]
“Part of Sinn Féin’s difficulty,” assesses one TD, was it “thought the housing crisis was going to deliver everything”.
Doherty has massive power within the party and there is a palpable nervousness among some over the idea of him being moved. His work on economic and fiscal policy has been key in assuaging public concerns on the party’s economic policies and whether Sinn Féin “blow the whole thing up”.
But one TD questions whether Sinn Féin, facing a Government armed with record surpluses and a free hand on spending, “did enough in terms of articulating a vision for the Irish economy”.
Some in the parliamentary party favour an overhaul that grows the leadership group and allows TDs more exposure, with a view to securing extra seats through running mates in the next general election.
One party figure believes any changes made will be met with little opposition: “This is just the reality when it comes to Shinners. We will go wherever we are asked to go.”
One figure almost certain to relocate as part of that mission is Murphy. While Sinn Féin has routinely used the Seanad to give a place to Northern voices, one TD confides that “it hasn’t been a great f**king experience”.
This is a reference to last term’s controversy around Niall Ó Donnghaile, the former senator who resigned over inappropriate texts to a teenager, and to a lesser extent, Elisha McCallion, who resigned from the Seanad after a controversy around Covid-19 grants in Northern Ireland.
The Minister for the Economy is the second senior Northern figure sent South, alongside McDonald’s deputy chief of staff Stephen McGlade. The standing of ex-IRA man Murphy is significant within the republican movement, and he is expected to lead the charge on cross-Border initiatives and positioning on a united Ireland, something multiple sources said Sinn Féin would seek to bring an even greater focus on in the coming term.
Closer co-operation with other Opposition parties is seen as key, although there is lingering resentment towards the Labour Party; some in Sinn Féin believe Labour leader Ivana Bacik targeted their party almost as much as it did the Government. Sinn Féin plans to try to explain its positions better on things such as carbon tax in an effort to quell concerns on the centre left about its climate commitments.
On the eve of another term in opposition, the mood in Sinn Féin is hardly fatalistic. In addition to investing in its ground game – conducting constituency and cumann-level reviews, and rejuvenating the membership – there is a wide range of views about the way forward.
Countering an impression that Sinn Féin is a “bit samey and a bit shouty” is key, says one TD, while another feels the party needs to be more “agile” on developing policy.
“As a political outfit, we need to grow into that role that is serious about taking power and everything that goes with that,” says one TD.
One common view is that the party must more straightforwardly oppose the incoming administration. Supporting the Government’s ill-fated family and care referendums is something McDonald herself has identified as an error.
Sinn Féin has “to make clear who we are and whose backs we have”, says a senior figure, bullishly outlining that the party has to be about “showing the alternatives, not giving an inch and not settling for half measures”.
“Sometimes there was a 50/50 call and in Opposition the correct thing to do politically is: ‘Right lads, let’s drop on this and go and oppose the Government’,” says another TD.:
“Maybe we need to play a political game more cutely.”
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