Sinn Féin’s difficulty over Michael McMonagle

The events surrounding Michael McMonagle’s departure from Sinn Féin have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues.

The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to a series of sex offences.

The offences occurred on various dates between May 2020 and August 2021when McMonagle was employed by the party.

Since then, Sinn Féin politicians have been pushed to explain how the party dealt with this case.

During the period in question McMonagle was directly employed in a full-time position by Michelle O’Neill and then Jemma Dolan and paid through the staffing allowance granted to MLAs by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

McMonagle was employed by O’Neill, who was at the time deputy first minister, from 2 March 2020 to 31 May 2020, and then by Dolan from 1 June 2020 to 8 July 2022.

In a previous mandate, McMonagle was employed jointly by former Sinn Féin MLAs Daithi McKay and Mitchel McLaughlin in a full-time position from 6 May 2014 to 31 October 2014.

He also worked as press officer for the party in the north west and at Westminster.

In August of 2021 McMonagle was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the next day he informed the party of this and he was immediately suspended from his role.

About a year later in June of 2022, his employment with Sinn Féin was terminated.

In September of 2022 McMonagle got a job with the British Heart Foundation using references provided by Sinn Féin press officers Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley.

The charity said neither reference had mentioned the ongoing police investigation nor McMonagle’s suspension from his previous employment.

It was when these references came to light at end of September this year that people started to ask questions of Sinn Féin.

When the references they had written were revealed, Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley resigned from the party.

Stormont’s Economy Minister Conor Murphy said it was “inexplicable” the references were provided and Sinn Féin had only became aware of them the previous week.

“No one was informed, no permission was sought, no advice was sought in relation to dealing with it,” he said.

Murphy was asked by the BBC why the party had not informed the British Heart Foundation of what it knew about McMonagle.

“Seriously, the BBC asking me these types of questions,” he responded.

He added: “We have a legal responsibility not to interfere with the police investigation.”

Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill denied knowing that McMonagle had taken up a new job with the charity and said there were lessons in terms of “due diligence for an employer when they take on an employee”.

Sinn Féin’s stance was that it did not know about the references, did not know about his new job, that it was up to the British Heart Foundation to vet their employees and that it could not have alerted the charity to anything without risking prejudicing the case against McMonagle.

Then at the beginning of October, the chief constable of the PSNI Chief Constable said that warning a charity about a potential police investigation into McMonagle would not have prejudiced the investigation, contradicting Conor Murphy.

Murphy later said he was “happy to accept” the chief constable’s view.

Later that month a photo emerged showing Michelle O’Neill and McMonagle attending the same event in Stormont’s Great Hall while he was working for the British Heart Foundation.

He carried the charity’s banner as they entered Parliament Buildings and mingled inside taking videos for the charity.

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member Doug Beattie said he found it “hard to believe” that O’Neill “didn’t notice her former colleague” at the Stormont event.

O’Neill maintains that she did not.

And then the British Heart Foundation released a statement.

The charity said that their head, Fearghal McKinney, had a phone call with O’Neill in which she “agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF’s due diligence process were unhelpful”.

Additionally, the charity said it told a senior Sinn Féin HR official about the McMonagle references in August 2023, contradicting statements made by Murphy and O’Neill.

O’Neill confirmed this and said the contact between the charity and Sinn Féin’s HR department was not brought to the attention of the party’s leadership at the time.

She described this as “a serious omission”.

So why did so much of what senior Sinn Féin figures initially said about how the party handled the issue change?

Speaking in the Dáil on 15 October, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald that the case has highlighted “issues and shortcomings” in the party’s internal procedures.

She said she has ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures” in the party.

“We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she said.

McDonald said that this overhaul would “clarify for the avoidance of doubt, for any member of staff or any member of the party as regards procedures, what needs to be communicated and flagged and to whom”.

BBC News NI offered Sinn Féin the opportunity to give a comment for this article.