Republican News · Thursday 1 August 2002

Bringing the dispossessed to Leinster House

BY MICHAEL PIERSE

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THE SECOND Treaty of Nice campaign, cutbacks in health and education, privatisation, negotiating the difficulties being created by unionism and securing all-Ireland representation in Leinster House are just some of the challenges immediately facing Sinn Féin's newly expanded team in the 26-County Parliament. But who are they and what do they intend to do?

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MICHEÁL MacDONNCHA

Mícheál MacDonncha, advisor to Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, has been working in the party's Leinster House offices since the TD was first elected in 1997. A former editor of An Phoblacht and longtime Árd Comhairle member, Mícheál is also very active in his local cumann in Donaghmede, Dublin and plays a role in Ó Caoláin's constituency of Cavan/Managhan - a heavy workload by anyone's standards. Sinn Féin's advances, for him, are not just a challenge for the new team in Leinster House, but for the wider party as well.

"How we advance our wider political project depends on ourselves in here and also, how we tie in with the wider organisation on the ground and nationally. And the challenge is to make that work chohesive, as a campaigning party and as a party that is represented in here and in the Assembly," he says.

But what tangible change can four new TDs plus one achieve?

"We're trying to do things, politically, that really has never been tried before. We never had a situation where there was a political party with the extent of electoral representation that we have on both sides of the border, and that's a hugely positive thing. But it's also a challenge, to ensure, given the different political conditions on both sides of the border, that we're actually working along a common track towards a common objective."

MacDonncha, however, is wary of electoralism becoming the objective rather than the means.

"Somebody asked to me recently what's next on the horizon and he immediately thought about the next election, and I think that we make a mistake if we slip into that way of thinking. We always have to think about the next election, but if we just get into a mode of being fixated with elections, we fall into a trap that all our opponents have fallen into - where it's just purely electoralism. We have to be focused on how we use the political strength that we have and how we deploy that. It's not political representation for its own sake, or for careers."

MARYLOU McDONALD

Ever tried, ever failed. Try again and fail better.

Maintaining the accountability and consonance of Sinn Féin's project in Leinster House, the Assembly and across the 32 Counties is the job of Marylou McDonald, the party's Political Oversight Manager.

McDonald succeeded in making a strong impact as Sinn Féin's candidate in Dublin Mid-West in the General Election this year and was a prominent member of the Irish National Congress before she joined the party.

The power of the 26-County political establishment cannot be underestimated, she says, especially for a party that takes its politics seriously.

"The bigger parties have that machinery around them, but a lot of it is about spin and what we're seeking to create throughout Leinster House and the institutions is about real politics," she says. "It's not about putting a block on things, but making a political advance. If you're to compare the resources that Sinn Féin has, as compared to the other parties we're dwarfed, despite the rhetoric in the papers saying Sinn Féin is the wealthiest party.

"For them, the priority is about selling a certain public image, rather than a political analysis. It's not only that our resource capabilities are different, we're approaching a different political project."

Her brief will entail travelling between Leinster House and Stormont, while also consulting broadly within Sinn Féin, ensuring that party policy is uniform and ideologically grounded.

"The brief is quite broad - it's about operating 32-County politics. So, obviously, there's a need for the work and politics we're involved with in Stormont to integrate with the work and politics in Leinster House. But it also has implications in terms of each of our council groups, and the Cúigí, and so on throughout the organisation and resonating at the level of the grassroots. It's about really creating a situation where we're punching our political weight."

McDonald is currently working on a Doctorate in Human Resources, which she says helps in terms of getting structures to operate properly and ensuring that work is done in a cooperative way, "in a comradely way".

So does Sinn Féin need to do an audit of where it's at structurally?

"There is certainly an argument to that effect. At any stage, any organisation has to look at itself, constantly really, to evaluate firstly how you're resourcing your people how you're developing your people - how much room you're giving people to actually develop themselves, to develop their own politics and thereby develop the politics of the struggle."

ROBBIE SMYTH

Developing the politics of the struggle will be Robbie Smyth's main task. The new Research and Policy Development Manager of the Leinster House team, Sinn Féin's representative on Intertrade Ireland, general policy guru and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Journalism at Griffith College Dublin, Smyth also writes a weekly column for An Phoblacht (Robbie MacGabhann).

His job will be as an advisor to Louth TD Arthur Morgan, as well as undertaking the broader challenge of coordinating the other TDs and workers in terms of research and policy initiatives. He defines the Sinn Féin project in Leinster House thus:

"We want to use our time in Leinster House as a campaigning party, fostering a link that has never before existed between the community and the state - it's the opposite of clientelism. That's where our socialism and republicanism comes in.

"There's also the importance of the all-Ireland agenda. The all-Ireland economic argument has been won. We now need to win it on housing, health, transport, communications and education.

The 26 Counties, as the "most unequal society in Western Europe, according to a recent UN report, has a great array of issues on which we need to campaign," he says. The marginalisation of rural Ireland, he adds, "compounds that inequality further".

"The IMF, World Bank, the government, the Central Bank and the EU are taking decisions away from the people. The big picture for us, in its simplest form, is the Connolly Project - the reconquest of Ireland - democratising and investing at every level of society.

"Being a campaigning party - that's how we're not going to become institutionalised. We're going to bring the excluded and the dispossessed to Leinster House, whether in bringing up issues inside, or physically, in protests oustside the building."

But will the party become complacent and staid like all the rest, I ask?

Samuel Beckett's words, Smyth says, might suffice for an answer:

"Ever tried, ever failed. Try again and fail better."