David Davin-Power: McDonald plans for a parallel reality

It was, McDonald declared, “game on for reunification”, insisting that there has to be a referendum on Irish unity within five years.

Journalists arriving for Sinn Féin’s manifesto launch yesterday had to pass through an intriguing virtual-reality installation by Turner prize winner Tai Shani in Dublin’s Temple Bar Studio. You don a headset and find yourself transported into a strange world of abstraction.

Upstairs, it was little different, as Mary Lou McDonald unveiled her party’s plan for a parallel economic and political reality, where multinationals are indifferent to swingeing taxes on their assets; where small businesses remain unaffected by an increase in employer PRSI; and where unionists are happy to contemplate throwing in their lot with the Republic.