Why Michelle O’Neill’s answers in the McMonagle case just don’t add up…

It’s a sniper’s rule you only get two shots at the enemy. A third and they will figure where you’re hiding and you’re a goner. This is now Sinn Féin’s fourth scandal and it is very clear it just cannot deal with child sex abuse cases that involve its members.

Being the fourth ‘shot’ the party can no longer expect to have the benefit of the doubt. Their defence on previous occasions was that they were historic, but policies were now in place to prevent repeats. Those policies have failed spectacularly in this case.

No one externally was ever shown any such policies, we were simply asked to take their word. As Brian noted two days ago the party hierarchy asked no questions of McMonagles new employment and only sacked the press officers after the media broke the story.

You can see from this revealing timeline put together by the Irish News just how the huge gap was between Sinn Féin realising McMonagle being arrested, suspension of SF employment and membership and his new employer (on references by former SF colleagues) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) finding out.

The Minister for the Economy (who is responsible for all employment law in NI) Conor Murphy was quickly wheeled out to claim that had the party informed the BHF it might compromise due process.

Stepping over the fact that two party colleagues thought it was okay to recommend McMonagle for a job with this third employer in spite of his arrest and suspension, the minister failed to explain how informing BHF would compromise the law.

Intriguingly the party also could not answer a direct question over whether or not the references were on Sinn Féin headed notepaper. Seán Mag Uidhir, one of the two press officers sacked, has been the party’s senior NI spokesman for ten years.

During a committee meeting First Minister Michelle O’Neill yesterday claimed that she did not see or engage McMonagle at a lobby event on 14th February last year. Yet a picture later released of the event shows the then alleged offender just feet away:

This photo was published this evening, *after* the First Minister told a committee she knew nothing at all about this man’s whereabouts.

He is about 10 feet from her here.

We are being asked to ignore our eyes and ears. https://t.co/B50fRQcJHC pic.twitter.com/TcIWwG040o

— Matthew O’Toole (@MatthewOToole2) October 2, 2024

Northern Ireland is a tiny place. In a bigger political party, in a bigger political entity like Britain or the US it might be plausible to claim that you had not known such a body was the same person who had been subject to disciplinary actions.

And Sinn Féin is not like the smaller NI parties where organisational chaos may reign or staff flip in and out through a revolving door of short term contract work. It’s elite (of which Mag Uidhir was one) is small, tight knit, not a little paranoid and secretive.

This last (secrecy) is both the source of its huge strength and its abiding weakness. Like the Catholic Church before it, right now it is doing its best to protect what it holds by circling the wagons and repelling all boarders. It cannot bring itself to be open.

With the Catholic Church its long road to recovery was to embrace openness, and do what Sinn Féin ought to have done in the Tyrell and Cahill cases, concede their mistakes, and seek external help to fix their broken (or possibly non existent) policies.

Of course the Church’s long crisis over the mishandling of child sex abuse continued for 30 years. It has done the right thing in the end after kicking and screaming against the impertinence of outsiders to suggest it be subject to civil and criminal law.

Canon law proved insufficient, because ultimately the reputation of the Church held primacy over any need to see justice being done to its victims.  Even in the case of Bishop Casey some of his worst abuses did not come to light until after his death.

Even all these years later it still could not bear the sunlight of publicity as a necessary disinfectant. Sinn Féin now finds itself in a similar position. It may feel it can tough it out in NI where there’s a shrug-the-shoulders weariness about such controversies.

But, politically, it is more difficult in the south. Two Fine Gael TDs have called for Dail time to ask Mary Lou McDonald who in her party knew about these circumstances and when, in spite of assurances from her that appropriate policy was in place.

With a catastrophic drop in the polls and a pre election budget giveaway this adds to a difficult situation. But the more important question is: how seriously do Sinn Féin’s politicians take child sex abuse or violence against girls and women?

The answer thus far is (like it has been for the Church), not a lot.

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