Election 2024 Day 14: Joys of a winter election as candidates plough on through snow weather warning (2024)

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said that she now felt “never more prepared” for possibly becoming Ireland’s first woman Taoiseach when the post-election horse-trading is completed, and the party was “running to win”.

The leader of the Opposition in the 33rd Dáil also maintained that all those earning up to €100,000 will be “better off” under a Sinn Féin-led Government.

Irish Independent's Senan Molony had a look at how she did on style and substance with just over a week now to polling day:

Asked about recent scandals which had rocked the party, Ms McDonald said she wouldn’t know in the ordinary course if people wrote references for wrongdoers. Those who did acted “way beyond” their authority, she said, referring to convicted sex offender Michael McMonagle, a former Sinn Féin press officer who received references after being expelled from the party. When people asked how Michelle O’Neill missed seeing him at an event when he was within touching distance, “the fact is, she didn’t.”

“I would say to you that on my watch, things are done by the book,” she said. The rulebook was applied without fear or favour, and the consequences “demonstrably happen,” she said, without naming ousted TD Brian Stanley. She insisted: “Nobody tells me what to do. I take my decisions, I take my counsel.” She was collegial, but ultimately she was the leader of the party. “Where there is a decision to be taken, I take it.” She took her responsibility very seriously. “I am at that stage of my life where I am quite opinionated, sometimes quite impatient,” but she had wide experience, she said.

For a country that is cash rich, we are services poor, she said. The Government was talking of available billions, but there were record homeless numbers —14,000 — and people were struggling to get by.

On the transatlantic threat from Donald Trump, she said whoever led the next Government needed to navigate very closely. During his last administration, multinational profits had gone up by 60pc, and Sinn Féin was not envisaging FDI companies leaving, she said. It may not be wise to talk up the threat, she said.

Those earning up to €100,000 will be “better off” under SF proposals for the economy, she said. “We have a fair and balanced taxation package.”

Those parties that had created and deepened the housing crisis now had no credibility when they say they will fix it, she said. SF’s plan would impose a rent freeze, restore the no-fault eviction ban, and invest for unprecedented homebuilding. “The State has to do the heavy lifting on this.”

Ms McDonald said she found it hard to believe, but she had met with a number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction industry who had let people go. She didn’t explain why.

On Sinn Féin’s plan to make homes affordable by the State owning the land on which they are built, Ms McDonald insisted there was little doubt about related mortgages. Banks wanted to know their money was secured, and would want to have “first lien on the land,” she said. But a Sinn Féin Government could “more than meet” any bank concerns that would otherwise impede lending.

First time buyer schemes would be phased out over five years, because they ultimately pushed up prices, but SF would abolish stamp duty for them.

SF is the only party that has produced a plan, she said, adding that there was “no such thing as open borders, nor should there be”. But when it was pointed out there was an open border on this island, she said there was freedom of movement across the European Union. It seemed a contradiction on the face of it.

Two-thirds of International Protection applications ultimately failed, and the process had to be speeded up. She repeated that asylum centres would be located in areas that were “stretched’. without choosing to “arbitrarily pick places out of the sky” that would receive them instead. Community consultation was not a veto, she said. “We watch for social cohesion.”

The rioting occurred in the heart of her constituency and she did not believe it was well managed on the day, or that the outgoing Minister for Justice Helen McEntee had acquitted herself well. “I had been down in the vicinity...much earlier that afternoon, and we could feel that there was a real problem about to unfold.” She was not blaming the Gardaí, but the right interventions were not made. She said she hoped the rioters, with 99 ‘persons of interest’ appearing on the Garda website this week, “all face the consequences of their actions.”

It is very important to remember the past, and to learn the lessons, she said. “But we are in the here and now”. Since 1998, a new generation had grown up and it was time to move on, she said, although she would respect everyone’s view, including those who would never vote for Sinn Féin. She pointed, however, to Michelle O’Neill’s “determination to be a leader for all”.

She hoped Dublin’s new relationship with London would be fruitful, she said. Colette Fitzpatrick asked about the looming Netflix drama about the IRA killing of Jean McConville, a mother of ten, in the early years of the Troubles. Ms McDonald said what her children had gone through was “absolutely horrific” and what had befallen them “profoundly wrong.” The family did not want the series made, she said, “as I understand it.”

Ditching the green jacket she wore in the ten-way leaders’ debate on Monday night, she smiled at the viewer and promised to end the housing crisis and to ease the cost of living, taking the first €45,000 of income out of the Universal Social Charge (USC). She listed other promises, ending on maintaining the pension age. The only way to end 100 years of Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael government was to vote Sinn Féin, she insisted.