Pat Leahy: The good, the bad and the ugly sides of Sinn Féin

The first Irish Times-Ipsos opinion poll of the year this week confirmed Sinn Féin’s dominant position on the political landscape, miles ahead of its nearest rivals and set fair to be the largest party — perhaps by far — in the next Dáil.

And while that doesn’t guarantee it will be in government, it certainly puts party leader Mary Lou McDonald in a good position from which to start. If the relative stability exhibited by present polling trends during a period of economic and international turmoil is one of the most important features of Irish politics right now, the rise of Sinn Féin since 2020 is the other. Always look beyond the passing rows and controversies to the big things that matter.

The poll findings on attitudes to refugees from the war in Ukraine and to asylum seekers more generally also illuminate the extent to which Sinn Féin deserves significant credit for marginalising some of the uglier anti-refugee sentiment that lurks below the surface in Irish politics. Those sentiments are present everywhere, but the evidence suggests they are strongest in those parts of the electorate that are home to Sinn Féin’s bedrock support.

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Poke around the entrails of the opinion poll data and you’ll see that Sinn Féin voters are consistently more likely to have harder attitudes to asylum seekers; 68 per cent of all voters are concerned that too many asylum seekers might come here, but 75 per cent of Sinn Féin voters share that view; 14 per cent of voters don’t think it’s important to fulfil international obligations towards refugees, 20 per cent of Sinn Féin voters agree; 84 per cent of people believe there’s a limit to the numbers the State can cope with, 92 per cent of Sinn Féin voters do. And so on. This is why Sinn Féin, and its leader, have been targeted in the anti-migrant protests. Some protesters have characterised the party’s approach to immigration as: “Brits out — everyone else in.”

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It would be easy, and perhaps politically profitable, for Sinn Féin to nod towards this constituency. It hasn’t, and that should be recognised.

But this week also demonstrated a less appealing side to the way Sinn Féin operates — its habit of bluster and evasion in the face of reasonable questions. It is a habit that will not help it achieve power.

It used to be that you couldn’t walk across the plinth without having to circumnavigate a Sinn Féin interview; now they’re nowhere to be found

Last weekend, The Irish Times published some details from a complaint to the Standards in Public Office Commission about a series of discrepancies and anomalies in the Sinn Féin accounts and election spending returns. The watchdog is examining the issue. Shortcomings in these declarations are, as the party repeatedly pointed out during the Paschal Donohoe posters controversy, a serious matter.

One of the issues raised by the complaint was the glaring contradiction between the amount of money Sinn Féin says it spent on elections in its annual accounts and the amount it says it spent on the same elections in declarations it must make to Sipo specifically about that spending.

There are lots of other questions about Sinn Féin’s finances, including how the party shunted millions of euros in a mysterious donation from an eccentric English man across the Border in order to avoid the Republic’s ban on foreign donations.

These are reasonable questions the party should answer; as we know, money matters in politics. That’s why we have rules about it. They are certainly questions Sinn Féin would insist that other parties answer. But the party has kept its head down, unusually this week not sending its spokespeople out to the Dáil plinth where they might be asked about such matters. When confronted on several broadcast interviews, they responded with denial and obfuscation. It used to be that you couldn’t walk across the plinth without having to circumnavigate a Sinn Féin interview; now they’re nowhere to be found. Tell you what, though, you can’t hide like that when you’re in government.

Is it seriously suggested — after our experience of the age of tribunals — that questions about how politicians afford their houses are not permitted?

This is not a haphazard response of politicians caught in the headlights. Sinn Féin is too careful and too wily for that. It is a deliberate strategy and it finds another expression in the party’s use of legal actions to silence questions it finds even more uncomfortable.

This week, it was confirmed that McDonald’s husband Martin Lanigan has lodged defamation proceedings against Shane Ross in relation to a biography of the Sinn Féin leader published last year. Ross, while repeatedly denying that there was any suggestion they had done anything wrong, raised a number of questions about how the couple had afforded the purchase and extensive renovation of their home. They have clearly taken umbrage at his temerity. But is it seriously suggested — after our experience of the age of tribunals — that questions about how politicians afford their houses are not permitted?

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[ Reassurance for Fine Gael and Sinn Féin but a jolt for Fianna Fáil ]

The effect of the move, of course, is that any further questions about the house are closed down because of the legal action.

Similarly with McDonald’s legal action against RTÉ over comments relating to the Mairia Cahill case. Cahill was raped by an IRA member when a teenager and has been fiercely critical of Sinn Féin’s and the wider republican movement’s treatment of her. McDonald has apologised to Cahill but denied any Sinn Féin cover-up. Comments on RTÉ last year which contrasted Sinn Féin’s and McDonald’s public commitment to women’s rights with the treatment of Cahill resulted in a libel action against the broadcaster. The effect is the same – any questions are closed down.

This is hardball, right enough, and Sinn Féin clearly doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. But maybe it should: it’s clear from the poll that the party will need friends to form a government after the next election, and some of them might have other options. If it’s going to persuade other parties to form a coalition, it will need to be trusted by them. This isn’t the way to go about that.