McDonald sets out stall after tough year

In a series of extended interviews, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has revealed the difficulties she has endured personally in the past year.

She described how her husband Martin Lanigan was diagnosed with colorectal cancer during a traumatic family break to France.

“I’ve had a very eventful and a very tough year or so. And sometimes that just happens in life, right? You get, you know, one thing happens and then another thing happens,” she told Virgin Media TV’s Ireland AM programme.

Ms McDonald had herself recovered from a hysterectomy in early June 2023 and the family trip came not long after. Ms McDonald said her husband had become unwell and needed to be rushed to hospital in Biarritz.

“We went on a short family break and literally between packing the case to come home and arriving at the airport, Martin got really, really sick,” she said.

“I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was serious, because he’s the type of man who, Irish man who, you know, wouldn’t matter what it was [he would say] ‘Sure I’m grand, everything’s grand’.

“But he wasn’t ok and, long story short, we had to get him to a hospital, the closest of which was in Biarritz,” she said.

“There was actually a lovely woman who came to our assistance in the airport. I never got her name, but she was a nurse. She was an Irish woman, but she was travelling, I think, to London, and she came and agreed with me that this was not good. He couldn’t get on the flight, so he went to the hospital.

“They saved his life. His bowel had burst, so he went through very serious surgery, and in the course of that, they found a tumour, and he got a cancer diagnosis.”

The Sinn Féin leader said it was “one of those moments in life where literally everything got turned upside down” and that she worried about getting her husband home, though his prognosis is now positive. She said Mr Lanigan is currently in hospital, but that her family is “walking to the light at the end of the tunnel” and that they were “lucky”.

Ms McDonald also talked about the death of her father just a few weeks ago, saying that the pair had had a “complicated” relationship.

“We buried my father five weeks ago. So anybody who has lost their dad knows that’s a very hard thing. It’s a complete game-changer.

“I love my dad, but we had a complicated relationship. He was a complicated person.

“My parents had been separated for most of my life, so it’s a kind of a strange thing. You lose your father, so you have the grief of that, but it’s not a straightforward grief, if that makes sense to you.

“As a family, we’re dealing with that. And the great thing is, though, that you come at these things together with your family, with your friends, and it’s a great thing about Irish people that you don’t ever have these experiences on your own. You always have people to lean on. And I’ve leaned on my people during that.”

Ms McDonald was also asked about the charging of a man in relation to a death threat made against her on social media, which she said “crossed a line”.

However, she said that she never considered stepping down as leader of Sinn Féin due to her personal issues.

“Life just throws curveballs at you and, in my case, several of them happened at one time,” she said.

Ms McDonald said the party is striving to “reconnect” with communities, especially those targeted by the far right.

Although the party has never been in government in Dublin, the term “traitor” has become a common insult by far right elements referring to politicians in general, but especially against Sinn Féin.

Ms McDonald said that after members of the far right in the 26 Counties were seen “cavorting with very, very vicious loyalist elements” in Belfast during the summer’s spate of racist riots and marches across Britain, “I think it has become very, very clear in many communities, who in fact the traitors are”.

She said the group of racist agitators who marched alongside loyalists were seen “marching down down the Ormeau Road and poking fun at the fact that five innocent Catholics have been gunned down in Graham’s bookmakers there”, referring to a sectarian massacre that took place in 1992.

And speaking to Newstalk Breakfast, she said the party’s poor showing in the recent local and European elections was the result of voters telling her party to “shape up” and “shake a leg”.

She said voters had also directed some of their frustration with Ireland’s current immigration policies at Sinn Féin.

“I think certainly the Government’s cack-handed mishandling of this has certainly caused unnecessary division and certainly some of the angst and the ire of that was directed at us by people who were frustrated,” she said.

“By the way, not by raving racists – far from it. Just by people who were frustrated and saw chaotic [policies] and a lack of any kind of proper planning on the part of Government.

“So certainly, that was an issue but I mean, we have set out our own stall very, very clearly on the matter.”

Following the local elections, Sinn Féin launched a new immigration policy that called for an audit of all local services in a community, including health, housing, transport and education, before any new asylum seeker accommodation is placed there.

“What we have said, very clearly, is, in communities where kids go to community projects and eat as much as they can on a Friday because they’re not sure that they’re going to be fed the following Monday, in communities where you don’t have to be a genius, you can walk in and you see the level of deprivation and stress, those are not appropriate sites for centres for another cohort of vulnerable people who need a lot of support and a lot of resources,” she said.

“That, to me, is just a matter of common sense.

“There are 4,000 schools, approximately, across the State. Of those, 1,200 are [designated as disadvantaged]. How does the State make that distinction?

“They make that distinction because we have data, information and evidence that tells us very clearly where those communities are that are frankly, on their knees - that are stretched beyond stretching.

“As a matter of good common sense and practicality, you don’t place further strain on a further cohort of vulnerable people who need to be protected and supported in those communities.”

She said “any responsible government” should carry out an audit of a community before placing new strain on services.

“Any responsible government has to then go and engage with the community, not to afford anybody a veto, but to actually have the conversation, to answer the queries and to listen, listen, listen to get it right,” she said.

“This Government has abjectly failed in doing any of those things and consequently - and I say this with deep regret - it has caused angst and division where there was no need for that.

“Where with a bit more thought, a little bit more cop on as well, much of that could have been avoided, in my strong opinion.”

The party is expected to run around 70 candidates in the next general election, which is likely to take place in either November or February. It has also recently launched a housing plan, with €39 billion to be spent over the next five years to deliver 300,000 homes, if Sinn Féin is elected to government.

She said her party has worked hard over the summer to ensure it is “present and articulating the needs and concerns” of Irish communities.

Deputy McDonald said her party got a “very clear message from the people” at the local elections and has been working to show people that a Sinn Féin Government is a “very, very different” choice to one led by Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.

“In the summertime at those elections, we got a very clear message from people,” she said.

“They were telling us to shape up; shake a leg. If I were to boil it down, I think, in 2020, people were very invested in change.

“We talk all the time and a lot about change but in truth, in the years that have followed, the housing crisis has deepened – people haven’t seen or felt the change that we talk about.

“So I think there was a bit of impatience around that. I think there was maybe a thought process that, you know, this old canard that ‘sure they’re all the same’ and I think we had to work on making it clear to people again that it actually matters – that there is a political choice.

“It matters who you support and who you vote for, because depending on that, the outcomes for you and for your family and for your community will be very, very different.”

Urgent Appeal