Elaine Loughlin: Mary Lou McDonald can only blame herself for interview train wreck 

Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald has adopted a cheap strategy of getting offended by questions, but this doesn’t hide the fact that McDonald simply does not know the answers. Picture: Damien Storan/PA

An unprepared Mary Lou McDonald only has herself to blame for yet another car-crash interview, but her party should be worried.

Sinn Féin finds itself in a very difficult position after disappointing local elections and a slump in the polls to its lowest level of support since 2020.

A review of the strategies deployed ahead of June’s elections was carried out in recent weeks, but party members should also be questioning the performance of their leader.

Bereft of the answers to basic questions on her own policies, McDonald this week decided to play the man not the ball.

“Your tone is extremely rude,” she declared, when probed by RTÉ’s Philip Boucher Hayes on how her party’s updated migration policy, which had been published the day before, would be resourced.

It came after the presenter had repeatedly tried to obtain details from the party leader.

Asked about the cost of the Sinn Féin pledge to triple International Protection Office staff numbers, Ms McDonald said the cost was “not enormous”.

“There is a costing for it, I don’t have it to hand, it is not enormous.”

When Boucher Hayes asked how “1,000 new civil servants is not an enormous cost”, Ms McDonald replied: “Are you actually interested in hearing the policy or simply nit-picking with me? Whatever it costs it needs to be done.”

Things escalated when Boucher Hayes interjected: “So, hang on a second, there is a costing, you don’t have it and you can’t tell us at the moment where those civil servants would come from.”

The line of questioning led McDonald to respond:

First of all, I have to say your tone with me in this interview is extremely rude. But be that as it may.... I’m less interested — and I would have thought that as a journalist and a broadcaster, you would be far more inquisitive — around what the Government is saying which you’re very happy to repeat ad nauseam, but actually what the Government is doing, or in this case has failed to do.

It may have been radio gold for the listener, but her own party members and supports must have recoiled listening to McDonald whose grasp of policy came across as scant at best.

“Did you hear the interview?” was the opening question posed with raised eyebrows by journalists, staffers and the few politicians still to be found around the halls of Leinster House on Wednesday.

Party colleague, Pearse Doherty quickly came to her defence, stating in a post on X that the interview had been in stark contrast to the “softly softly approach to the Taoiseach and other ministers”, before adding that it is “time for equal treatment”.

Failing to accept that it was a bad performance for which she only had herself to blame, McDonald posted: “I look forward to @rtenews ‘robust’ interviewing of government ministers and representatives.”

RTÉ journalists have adopted similarly robust interviewing styles when dealing with government representatives in the past, there is no suggestion that they might shy away from this in the future.

Robust is certainly a word that could have described the RTÉ interview with Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney as the controversy around the appointment of Katherine Zappone to a UN special role rumbled on over the summer of 2021.

Bryan Dobson was forensic in pressing Coveney on the appointment. Under sustained pressure over the timeline of events that led up to the botched appointment, Coveney stated: “Bryan don’t start trying to create a news story here now.”

In April 2021, journalist Gavin Jennings put Stephen Donnelly under the grill with the Health Minister coming out of the interview almost cremated after fumbling over covid vaccine figures.

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“I haven’t got the week-by-week figures in front of me,” Donnelly was forced to admit during the interrogation.

There was also a memorable News at One interview with former Minister of State Robert Troy in 2022 over errors he made in declaring his property interests, which left many listeners squirming.

McDonald of course would not have got herself tangled up in such testy exchanges this week if she had been prepared and had come armed with the relevant facts.

But this is not the first time the opposition leader has been caught out.

In June, when questioned on a core housing policy, McDonald was unable to provide an example of single piece of public land that her party would use for the provision of housing when she sat down in the Newstalk studio with Pat Kenny.

After repeatedly asking if the party have carried out any detailed analysis to ascertain the amount of land that might be suitable and where it is situated, an exasperated Kenny suggested: “For example, what public lands? You are not talking about Phoenix Park?”

Failing to accept that it was a bad performance for which she only had herself to blame, McDonald posted on X: 'I look forward to @rtenews ‘robust’ interviewing of government ministers and representatives.' Picture: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos

“Of course I’m not talking about the Phoenix Park,” McDonald said before stating that the land “is out there”.

“I don’t have a list in front of me, you are trying to bounce me on a specific.”

The day before McDonald had a similar encounter as again she was unable to provide details during an interview with Claire Byrne.

When the presenter asked about how Sinn Féin’s government would pay for retrofitting while axing the carbon tax, she was told: “It will be paid for through the State, there isn’t a shortage of money, Claire.”

“Had you wished for a detailed discussion on our budget, I would have brought and would have had in front of me to my eye the precise figures,” McDonald stated.

It is impossible, by any stretch of the imagination, to accept that a politician going into what was a 35-minute interview would not anticipate scrutiny of their own policy and budget priorities.

A cheap strategy of getting offended by questions, doesn’t hide the fact that McDonald simply does not know the answers.

She regularly accuses the Government of failing spectacularly on everything from housing, to health and emigration, but McDonald has herself failed on the finer points.

You cannot govern with broad stroke soundbites.

McDonald should take the summer break to get a handle of her own parties policies.

She may be able to hit back at journalists and radio presenters, but she won’t be able use deflection on the doors during an election campaign.