Mary Lou McDonald comments 'hammer home Fine Gael concerns' over talks

Comments made by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald about the IRA campaign during the Troubles "hammer home concerns" which Fine Gael has about the party, according to a TD.

Dublin Rathdown TD Neale Richmond said Ms McDonald's comments in a weekend interview were not fitting of a person seeking the office of Taoiseach.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Independent, Ms McDonald said she wished the paramilitary campaign had not happened, but believed it was justifiable.

"I wish it hadn't happened, but it was a justified campaign," she said.

"It was inevitable; it was utterly inevitable and anybody with even a passing sense of Irish history could have predicted it surely as night followed day."

Ms McDonald said she believed she likely would have joined the IRA had she grown up in the North. “Yeah, I think there’d be every chance, every possibility. I certainly understand how it was that people volunteered to [join] the IRA - anybody looking at the circumstances from partition onwards, the nature of the northern state, everything that happened, how young people in particular took the fight to the British state. 

And, let's face it, there have been previous chapters where previous generations of young people in a different context, but with the same impulse, had equally volunteered to the IRA and taken on that fight.

Mr Richmond said the comments showed that his party's policy of not entering government formation talks with Sinn Féin was justified. "It's very hard to hear someone say a disgusting campaign of violence was justified - when you think of -Fine Gael senator- Billy Fox, killed coming home from visiting his girlfriend or the Warrington and Manchester bombings.

"We all want to move on but at some point we have to say we're sorry, it was wrong and it's time to move on. Mary Lou grew up in Rathgar and was 23 at the time of some of these incidents - she wasn't a child.

"The comments certainly hammer home some of the concerns that we had before election. Such commentary from a party leader and someone who wants to be elected Taoiseach underline our concerns and those concerns are not being assuaged."

Ulster Unionist Party leader Steve Aiken condemned the comments, saying they insulted all of the victims of the Troubles.

"Mary Lou McDonald’s comments are an insult to all the many innocent victims of terrorism - on all sides in the Troubles. If the last decades have taught us anything it is that violence is not only counter-productive, it creates an immovable reluctance for anyone to engage with or trust those who glamorise or seek to identify with those who perpetrated terrorism.

Remarkably for a political leader who says she is willing to reach out to Unionists, Mary Lou McDonald has demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the abhorrence we all feel for the Provisional IRA and its campaign of butchery and ethnic cleansing.

"There are many thousands who felt aggrieved, on all sides. Instead of resorting to terror, they sought to achieve change through peaceful and democratic means. It’s a pity Mary Lou McDonald didn’t reflect on the anniversary of the referendum on the Belfast Agreement and its commitment to peace - maybe Sinn Fein are seeking to rewrite the history of this as well."

Sinn Fein HQ did not respond to a request for a statement, but party sources said the reaction to the comments from other parties was "performative".

"Everyone knows who and what Sinn Féin is, as well as its history," said one source.

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