Mary Lou McDonald calls for opposition to collaborate ahead of next election 

Sinn Féin’s leader is being tipped for a presidential run, but she still has work to do in the Dáil, writes Paul Hosford

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald during an interview at Leinster House. Picture: Gareth Chaney

Mary Lou McDonald has been clear that she wants to be taoiseach. 

But president? She’s somewhat less clear. While she tells the Irish Examiner that she is not “being coy”, the question begs to be asked and her answer leaves scope for her to go either way when the party makes a decision in the middle of September.

For now, though, she is the leader of the opposition, not the State, and her focuses are more immediate as the Dáil prepares to return. The speaking time row at the outset of this Dáil allowed Ms McDonald to emerge as more than the leader of the opposition, but as the leader of a combined opposition, one which is in direct contrast with the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition.

A year ahead of last year’s general election, the idea of a Sinn Féin-led government was nearly considered a fait d’accompli. Polling had for a long time made the prospect of Ms McDonald being taoiseach seem not just possible, but probable. 

But 2024 was a bad year for the party, largely. Controversies around former senator Niall Ó Donnghaile and now independent TD Brian Stanley took up massive amounts of column inches and prompted Ms McDonald to make an unprecedented Dáil statement. 

Local and European election results were, in truth, not terrible, but felt flat and the general election largely repeated that pattern.

Only in the final days of the campaign did the idea of a combined platform aimed at dethroning the civil war parties emerge and, even then, its presentation came more from those online who wished to see it than any of those who might be tasked with making it a reality.

'We need to learn from it'

Nearly a year later, Ms McDonald believes that the argument against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is one which the public is open to, but says that her party should have done more.

“I think [the idea of a combined left government didn’t resonate with voters] for lots of reasons, not least because we have to accept responsibility for this, and we need to learn from it; we hadn’t done enough within Sinn Féin to build and develop those relationships and that politics and that collaboration at that point. We simply hadn’t.

“So I think when the narrative then became that, sure it’s inevitable, sure, what’s the point? What’s the point of voting? Sure Fine Gael are getting in anyhow, I don’t think we had built the ballast to kind of say, ‘no, no, no, there’s nothing inevitable here. There is, in real terms, a choice available’.”

In that regard, does the presidency not offer a chance to coalesce with parties of the left and support Catherine Connolly? Does Sinn Féin still view itself in that light?

“We are certainly a party of the left. We’re an Irish Republican party. We’re a party that’s about social justice, we’re a party that’s about equality, about Irish reunification.

“But there are points at which we have absolute common cause, and where we have that common cause, I feel that we have an absolute responsibility to work together. 

"So the need to collaborate, to build relationships, and maybe most importantly, to ensure that, for us in Sinn Féin, but I think more widely, to be sure that whenever the next general election is, that we have done the work to show to the electorate, not simply to say we want change and we want a government beyond Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but to have done the work so that the electorate in their mind’s eye can actually see what that might look like and who might be in that government.”

Childcare

Part of that work, Ms McDonald suggests, will focus on making childcare a key issue when the Dáil resumes in a fortnight. The issue had taken up much of the election campaign with a consensus around making the system more affordable, but no concrete proposals have emerged.

“In the last election, big promises were made on childcare, because big work needs to be done. The current Government, Simon Harris et al, said ‘we’re going to have to plan within 100 days’, but there is no plan. Costs have gone up. Services have disengaged because their core funding isn’t sufficient. There’s been no growth in capacity. Now, we’ve 40,000 children on waiting lists for places, a vast disimprovement and that makes people cynical.”

'Simon Harris has to be held to account'

Last weekend, Ms McDonald spoke at a rally in memory of Harvey Sherratt Morrison, a nine-year-old Dublin boy who died in July having waited years for treatment for scoliosis. Asked would she join a motion of no-confidence in Mr Harris, who, as health minister in 2017, pledged no child would wait more than four months for treatment, Ms McDonald says she believes the opposition should en masse.

“Harvey didn’t make his 10th birthday. How do you square his maltreatment, the failure of him as a wee boy and his mother and father and his wider family, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting he spent his life, his short life, waiting.

“I think this is horrific, and I think Simon Harris has to be held to account for a promise he made back as far back as 2017 and failed again and again.

“I have no confidence in Simon Harris. I have no confidence in any [of the Government] they’re utterly useless. This Government are useless.”