Sinn Féin: No questions over McDonald’s leadership

Michelle O’Neill has said there are “no questions” over her party president’s leadership of Sinn Féin.

On Tuesday, Mary Lou McDonald defended Sinn Féin’s decision not to reveal that former Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile had been suspended for sending inappropriate texts to a teenage boy when he stepped down last year.

O’Neill said she was “very confident” her party can stand over how it dealt with the issue.

The party has come under pressure in recent weeks over its handling of child safeguarding issues.

“Mary Lou has set out very categorically everything that we knew and when we knew it in the Dáil {Irish parliament} statement,” O’Neill said.

“Everything that we know is now on the public record.”

O’Neill said she was “trying to be as transparent and open and frank” as possible.

“We are a human organisation made up of people; any organisation will have many challenges at different times,” she said.

Asked whether there are any outstanding cases where party members are being, or have been, investigated over similar concerns, she replied there are “certainly no other” cases that the party is engaged in.

Mr Ó Donnghaile served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2011 to 2012 and a councillor on Belfast City Council from 2011 to 2016.

Earlier on Wednesday, Democratic Unionist Party councillors requested that his portrait in Belfast City Hall be removed.

In a statement, a Sinn Féin spokesperson said the party “agrees that the portrait should be removed”.

The Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, said “ultimately this isn’t a crisis of institutions, it is a crisis within Sinn Féin”.

Little-Pengelly said Sinn Féin needed to “get their house in order” and that “no organisation should operate with a cloak of secrecy”.

When it comes to safeguarding of children, “there are very serious questions for Sinn Féin to answer”, she said.

“It is really important that everyone steps up with full transparency and honesty to answer these serious questions,” she said.

She added there were “serious concerns” about the internal mechanisms of Sinn Féin and a “lack of transparency”.

However, she said it was her intention to “continue to try to ensure stability” at Stormont.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said it was clear Ireland’s public and parliament were “duped” by Sinn Féin.

In a reference to the next general election, Mr Harris added: “How the leader of Sinn Féin wishes to respond to that is for her, and ultimately how the people of Ireland wish to respond to Sinn Féin will be a matter for them to consider in due course.”

Mr Ó Donnghaile confirmed in a statement to the Irish News on Tuesday that he sent an inappropriate text to a youth member of the party, a 17-year-old boy in Northern Ireland.

The message is believed to have been personal in nature but not sexually explicit.

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty has said he accepts that “full information” around Niall Ó Donnghaile’s resignation was not provided by the party.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Doherty said this decision was made in the context of someone who has been through a mental health crisis.

Doherty said that given there was no finding of illegality or criminality, a decision was made that it would not be in Mr Ó Donnghaile’s mental health interests to name him at that time.

However he added: “Mr Ó Donnghaile faced the full rigours of the party and the matter was referred to the PSNI as soon as it was established that the complainant was under the age of 18.

“He would have been suspended immediately from the party.”

Doherty said “people now know why that full information was not provided”.

Niall Ó Donnghaile is from the Short Strand area of east Belfast and has been a member of Sinn Féin since he was a teenager.

In 2011, Mr Ó Donnghaile was elected as a councillor in Belfast and, at the time, was the city’s youngest lord mayor at 25 years old.

Prior to taking elected office he had been a party press officer.

In 2016, he was elected to the Seanad, the Republic of Ireland’s upper chamber.

In December 2023, Mr Ó Donnghaile announced he had been unable to attend the Seanad since the summer recess on medical advice.

Up until that point he had been Sinn Fein’s leader in the chamber.

He said the situation was unlikely to change in the short term and resigned from the Seanad.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said he had given a “voice to northern nationalists” and wished him and his family well.

Former Irish Labour senator Máiría Cahill has said McDonald hid behind the “excuse of mental health”.

Ms Cahill says she was raped as a teenager by an IRA man and that Sinn Féin and the IRA tried to cover it up.

The former senator has been outspoken in her criticism of how the party handled the allegations.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme, she said she was “disturbed” by the recent behaviour of Sinn Féin.

“I’d just like to remind people that there’s a young person at the centre of all of this watching it all play out so Sinn Féin have a responsibility to conduct itself properly and I don’t believe that they have done so,” she said.

The former Labour senator was in the Dáil (lower house of parliament) public gallery on Tuesday during the statements made on child protection.

Reflecting on McDonald’s statement, she said: “What the party did yesterday was try to excuse and explain away its behaviour.”

“I don’t think that’s acceptable,” she added.