In the weirdest consensus of post Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland Sinn Féin has agreed to a TUV proposal to cancel former Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile. Just days ago he was using X to attack journalists for following the McMonagle story.
That was before we knew about his own behaviour, and the real reason for his stepping down with a fine encomium from party leader Mary Lou McDonald. Along his official portrait, all evidence of his existence on Twitter has been ruthlessly expunged.
The party will hope (as they have before) that her performance on Wednesday in the Dail will draw a close to this calamitous series of stories that suggest the party not only has no child safeguarding policy but follows a policy of children second.
But Senators Mary Seery Kearney of Fine Gael and Independents Alice Mary Higgins and Lynn Ruane have written to the Oireachtas Commission seeking more detail regarding “egregious breaches” of Oireachtas child protection policies.
Given these messages took place over a year ago the age of the young person at the time will be a critical factor since there’s a differential in the age of consent: it’s sixteen in Northern Ireland but seventeen in the Republic. That plot may yet thicken.
Each episode of this story comes with the sparest of explanations, as the party adds as little as it can get away with no matter how implausible. As noted on Talkback on Wednesday this politics of concealment is hardwired in Sinn Féin’s internal culture.
As noted here like the Church before it, it is run by a small, tight knit and secretive elite that is paranoid about outsiders. Their replacement as PAC Chair is the eponymous niece of one of three IRA volunteers killed by the SAS in Gibraltar Mairéad Farrell.
The placing someone so inexperienced and low profile in the most important, and high profile job on the opposition back benches is a classic iconic signal to any other southern TD over who exactly is in charge without anyone ever having to say it.
The Brian Stanley story for now appears to have run its course, although Gavan Reilly has noted on Virgin’s Group Chat that this may be that since he’s already lawyered up it may be that he’s keeping his powder dry for further action (after the election).
It is fair to suggest that Sinn Féin did not see this Ó Donnghaille case coming. He clearly thought his ‘bargain’ with the party was sound (he continued to be paid as leader in the Seanad for months after he had resigned from the party) till last weekend.
This politics of concealment has protected from legitimate by what Professor Tim Snyder calls ‘both sides-ism’, where everything is reduced to just two perspectives, treating both as fundamentally alike, and then ignoring or adjusting the data.
Factual investigation would involve identifying other perspectives which the cult of Both Sides disregards. It would necessitate separating the two aspects Both Sides from each other and confronting their words with the facts of the world. To believers in the cult of Both Sides, it is a relief clothed in righteousness never to have to perform such labour.
Snyder’s describing how the US media use political statements from one political candidate as bankable currency to put it against another without cross referencing it with other facts and data to bring the audience a credible version of the truth.
A few years ago Simon Kuper noted how this reduces media to mere tribunes of identity, rather than organs who will bring you news about what’s actually happening. Kuper works for one of the UK papers that doesn’t rely on cultural signalling, the FT.
No doubt it is this paradigm, dominant in the UK, that Kevin Meagher had in mind on The View last night, but in an ultra competitive, multi-party Ireland it is the strong network of PSB driven radio stations that remain key in every local election.
This is one reason why Dublin journalism has been uncommonly inept at guessing the outcome of almost every race I’ve witnessed since 2002. The truth is that information got out of control of the tight control of the SF operation and it got messy.
Despite her assertiveness in the Dail this week Mary Lou admitted that her party’s protocols on child protection needed ‘a complete overhaul’ after McMonagle. As Miriam Lord put it as Mary Lou slinked out of the chamber: Her lines don’t stack up.
The question many sceptical supporters of the Belfast Agreement asked back in 1997 was would Sinn Féin’s paramiltary led history corrupt democracy or would democracy corrupt their historical tradition of paramilitarism? The jury remains out.
Whatever else can be said about the last two weeks, what we know already is that this is not the story. Concealment has been the default setting throughout Sinn Féin’s long journey from paramilitary adjunct to the largest party on the island of Ireland.
That is Sinn Féin’s unique characteristic in the Irish political market and there’s no sign that it is going to change any time soon.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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