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and in the Northern State and in Britain and elsewhere who endured the prisons: we don’t need lectures from Micheál Martin or anyone else about conflict. We have been there [prolonged applause, whistling and cheering]. Let me say this: Republicans did not go to war: the war came to us. So there is an obligation on political leaders to work to resolve conflict, to build reconciliation, not to fight a false war, not to refight a false and scammy-type rhetorical approach at looking at the past in a totally skewed way. Micheál Martin needs to wake up and realise that the war is over. It’s now time to build the peace [applause]. But there has to be a dividend, an economic and social dividend in the peace for everyone, not just in the North but here in this state also. So his selective lookbacks on Irish history convince no one [pause]. We at least are consistent. We are as proud of Bobby Sands and Mairéad Farrell as we are of the Volunteers of 1916, and those who fought the Black and Tans [applause].

      The meeting ended after the speech, which lasted twenty minutes. Outside in the corridor, a glass case held mementos of Napoleon Bonaparte, who also knew a thing or two about conflict, albeit on a wider scale. Sinn Féin people said they had been anxious to rebut Martin’s attack on them, but without alienating the Fianna Fáil grassroots. Indeed, Adams said in his speech that he had spoken to long time Fianna Fáil activists, who were ‘disappointed’ and ‘disillusioned’ because the leadership had ‘strayed from its original republican origins’. A Sinn Féin TD told me that Fianna Fáilers in his constituency were unhappy with their party leader’s remarks, as they were hoping to get Sinn Féin transfers in the next election.

      All’s fair in love and war and, arguably, Martin needed to have a few swipes at Sinn Féin, not only to express strongly-held convictions, but to shore up his leadership and stop ‘Adams and Co’ from nibbling away at Fianna Fáil’s support. Martin’s position in the party had been under some pressure, due to poor poll showings. His Arbour Hill oration came a week ahead of the annual Fianna Fáil ardfheis (national conference) and a month before a by-election in the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency, where it was considered critical for Martin’s future that Fianna Fáil should take the seat – as it did by a comfortable margin.

      There is polling evidence that, between them, Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Labour could end up with a majority in the Dáil. However, as Martin pointed out on the Late Late Show, Sinn Féin’s performance in the 2014 local elections was significantly lower than the opinion surveys suggested, whereas Fianna Fáil did better than the polls had indicated beforehand. In any case, given Martin’s constant denunciations of Sinn Féin and what he calls ‘the Provisional movement’, it would be quite a turnaround if he somehow ended up in government with them. In the past, however, the Progressive Democrats and the Labour Party slated Fianna Fáil without mercy, but then decided that their best course of action was to join them at the cabinet table.

      At a press conference during the Fianna Fáil ardfheis in the Royal Dublin Society (foreign observers must wonder at the number of places in this Republic with the word ‘royal’ in their titles) on the last weekend of April 2015, I asked Martin what his approach would be in the next Dáil, given that he had ruled out coalition with Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. He replied:

      We’re going to fight the election first, Deaglán, and we’re going to fight the election on the issues, which I think is a legitimate position to have. And I have said this to a number of journalists who have been interviewing me in recent times. The debate moves very quickly on to a post-election scenario, as if it’s already happened. It hasn’t happened: we haven’t had the general election. We have to fight the election on the issues and that’s what we’re doing, in terms of the policy issues … and we’re going out there to maximise our vote and our seats so that we can influence, in whatever way that may turn out, the implementation of those policies.

      One of Martin’s colleagues later told me that Fianna Fáil had worked out, in fairly precise terms, that Fine Gael stood to lose 22 out of its 69 Dáil seats, and Labour would go down by 16 seats from 34 to 18. (Most observers would find the Labour prediction rather optimistic.) The priority was to ensure that as many of these lost seats as possible went to Fianna Fáil. The attacks on Sinn Féin were motivated by the perception that a good deal of Sinn Féin’s support was ‘soft’, and could be swayed in Fianna Fáil’s direction. Speaking on condition of anonymity, this member of the parliamentary party said there was a strong possibility the next election would result in a minority government which would not last long and that the Dáil would be dissolved again fairly quickly. He ruled out coalition with Fine Gael, but felt that an agreement between Fianna Fáil and an anti-austerity grouping led by Sinn Féin was a real possibility, despite what his party leader was saying. Other parties in the past had denounced their opponents and then gone into government with them: that’s the way the game was played.

      Another prominent party figure from a rural area said the attacks on Sinn Féin had been a good idea, but that it was nevertheless likely there would be a Fianna Fáil-Sinn Féin coalition in the end, although he pointed out that any coalition proposal would be subject to approval by a special Fianna Fáil ardfheis. Meanwhile, a prominent Fianna Fáil stalwart based in a Dublin constituency said the party should remain in opposition, as a tie-up with Fine Gael would mean that about one-third of the membership would drop out, and another third would start looking to Sinn Féin. He said that, apart from some office-hungry TDs, there was little appetite for coalition with Sinn Féin either.

      The prospect of a coalition involving Fine Gael and Sinn Féin would appear, on the surface at least, to be even more remote. The idea was floated in the past by a senior Fine Gael advisor at the time, Frank Flannery, but this was before the change of mood, symbolised by Syriza, came about in European politics. In the aftermath of the 2007 general election, when no party had a clear majority, Sinn Féin publicly urged Enda Kenny to contact the party for discussions.Cavan-Monaghan TD Caoimghín Ó Caoláin told interviewer RóisínDuffy on RTÉ radio’s This Week programme, on 10 June 2007, that Sinn Féin was ‘very open-minded’ as to who should become taoiseach, because the real issue was the programme for government.

      That would be quite a turn-up for the books and might well cause problems with some of the unions, but past experience shows that anything can happen when political power is at stake.19

      When the election does take place, one of Sinn Féin’s greatest challenges will be to win transfers from voters whose first loyalty is to other parties. The Irish system of proportional representation means that the electorate can vote for candidates in order of preference. When the first choice from the ballot paper is either elected with a surplus of votes over the quota or else eliminated, the vote may be transferred to the second choice. If the second choice is elected or eliminated, the vote may be transferred to the third choice, and so on. Given the continuous attacks on Sinn Féin in the Dáil and the media on issues ranging from the abduction of Jean McConville to the manner in which the republican movement is said to have dealt with allegations of sexual abuse by IRA members, Sinn Féin may well find it difficult to get transfers in the general election. However, the party looks set to be a much stronger presence in the next Dáil. There is no evidence at this stage to suggest it will be a bigger party than Fine Gael, but some of the poll evidence suggests that it could give Fianna Fáil a run for its money. Whether it will have a prospect of entering government on satisfactory terms is very much up in the air. It seems safe to say that, once the results are in, Sinn Féin will have moved further from the margins, and closer to the mainstream, in Irish political life.

      2. HELLO MARY LOU – GOODBYE GERRY?

      SHE IS OFTEN SPOKEN of as the future leader of Sinn Féin. And if or more likely when – the party enters a coalition government in Dublin, it is inconceivable that she would not be a cabinet minister. Mary Lou McDonald is rarely out of the news, and this chapter explores the background to her political career and the journey she has made from Rathgar and Fianna Fáil to Leinster House and Sinn Féin.

      With the general election drawing close at the time of writing, McDonald is a high-profile player in Republic of Ireland politics. If the dice fell the right way and Sinn Féin could lay claim to the job of tánaiste (deputy prime minister) or even – heaven forbid, their critics say – taoiseach(prime minister), it is not entirely fanciful to suggest that she

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