{"id":155117,"date":"2024-10-16T15:54:41","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T15:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/16\/sinn-fein-no-questions-over-mcdonalds-leadership-michelle-oneill\/"},"modified":"2024-10-16T15:54:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T15:54:41","slug":"sinn-fein-no-questions-over-mcdonalds-leadership-michelle-oneill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/16\/sinn-fein-no-questions-over-mcdonalds-leadership-michelle-oneill\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinn F\u00e9in: No questions over McDonald’s leadership – Michelle O’Neill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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‘No questions over Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership’<\/figcaption><\/p>\n
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Michelle O’Neill has said there are “no questions” over her party president’s leadership of Sinn F\u00e9in. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mary Lou McDonald defended Sinn F\u00e9in’s decision<\/a> not to reveal that former Senator Niall \u00d3 Donnghaile had been suspended for sending inappropriate texts to a teenage boy when he stepped down last year.<\/p>\n

O’Neill said she was “very confident” her party can stand over how it dealt with the issue.<\/p>\n

The party has come under pressure in recent weeks over its handling of child safeguarding issues<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Mary Lou has set out very categorically everything that we knew and when we knew it in the D\u00e1il {Irish parliament} statement,” O’Neill said.<\/p>\n

“Everything that we know is now on the public record.”<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill said she was \u201ctrying to be as transparent and open and frank\u201d as possible. <\/p>\n

“We are a human organisation made up of people; any organisation will have many challenges at different times,” she said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether there are any outstanding cases where party members are being, or have been, investigated over similar concerns, she replied there are \u201ccertainly no other\u201d cases that the party is engaged in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Crisis within Sinn F\u00e9in’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"PAPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Emma Little-Pengelly said there were transparency issues<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, said “ultimately this isn’t a crisis of institutions, it is a crisis within Sinn F\u00e9in”.<\/p>\n

Little-Pengelly said Sinn F\u00e9in needed to “get their house in order” and that “no organisation should operate with a cloak of secrecy”.<\/p>\n

When it comes to safeguarding of children, “there are very serious questions for Sinn F\u00e9in to answer”, she said.<\/p>\n

“It is really important that everyone steps up with full transparency and honesty to answer these serious questions,” she said.<\/p>\n

She added there were “serious concerns” about the internal mechanisms of Sinn F\u00e9in and a “lack of transparency”. <\/p>\n

However, she said it was her intention to “continue to try to ensure stability” at Stormont.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said it was clear Ireland’s public and parliament were “duped” by Sinn F\u00e9in.<\/p>\n

In a reference to the next general election, Mr Harris added: “How the leader of Sinn F\u00e9in wishes to respond to that is for her, and ultimately how the people of Ireland wish to respond to Sinn F\u00e9in will be a matter for them to consider in due course.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Context of mental health’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Mr \u00d3 Donnghaile confirmed in a statement to the Irish News<\/a> on Tuesday that he sent an inappropriate text to a youth member of the party, a 17-year-old boy in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

The message is believed to have been personal in nature but not sexually explicit.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in TD Pearse Doherty has said he accepts that “full information” around Niall \u00d3 Donnghaile’s resignation<\/a> was not provided by the party.<\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Doherty said this decision was made in the context of someone who has been through a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n

Doherty said that given there was no finding of illegality or criminality, a decision was made that it would not be in Mr \u00d3 Donnghaile’s mental health interests to name him at that time.<\/p>\n

However he added: \u201cMr \u00d3 Donnghaile faced the full rigours of the party and the matter was referred to the PSNI as soon as it was established that the complainant was under the age of 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have been suspended immediately from the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doherty said “people now know why that full information was not provided”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Who is Niall \u00d3 Donnghaile?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Niall \u00d3 Donnghaile is from the Short Strand area of east Belfast and has been a member of Sinn F\u00e9in since he was a teenager.<\/p>\n

In 2011, Mr \u00d3 Donnghaile was elected as a councillor in Belfast and, at the time, was the city’s youngest lord mayor at 25 years old.<\/p>\n

Prior to taking elected office he had been a party press officer.<\/p>\n

In 2016, he was elected to the Seanad, the Republic of Ireland’s upper chamber.<\/p>\n

In December 2023, Mr \u00d3 Donnghaile announced he had been unable to attend the Seanad since the summer recess on medical advice.<\/p>\n

Up until that point he had been Sinn Fein’s leader in the chamber.<\/p>\n

He said the situation was unlikely to change in the short term and resigned from the Seanad.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald said he had given a “voice to northern nationalists” and wished him and his family well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Hiding behind excuses’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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M\u00e1ir\u00eda Cahill says she has been “disturbed” by the recent behaviour of Sinn F\u00e9in<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Former Irish Labour senator M\u00e1ir\u00eda Cahill has said McDonald hid behind the “excuse of mental health”.<\/p>\n

Ms Cahill says she was raped as a teenager by an IRA man and that Sinn F\u00e9in and the IRA tried to cover it up.<\/p>\n

The former senator has been outspoken in her criticism of how the party handled the allegations.<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme<\/a>, she said she was “disturbed” by the recent behaviour of Sinn F\u00e9in.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d just like to remind people that there\u2019s a young person at the centre of all of this watching it all play out so Sinn F\u00e9in have a responsibility to conduct itself properly and I don\u2019t believe that they have done so,” she said.<\/p>\n

The former Labour senator was in the D\u00e1il (lower house of parliament) public gallery on Tuesday during the statements made on child protection.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on McDonald’s statement, she said: “What the party did yesterday was try to excuse and explain away its behaviour.”<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t think that\u2019s acceptable,” she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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‘No questions over Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership’ Michelle O’Neill has said there are “no questions” over her party president’s leadership of Sinn F\u00e9in. On Tuesday, Mary Lou McDonald defended Sinn F\u00e9in’s decision not to reveal that former Senator Niall \u00d3 Donnghaile had been suspended for sending inappropriate texts to a teenage boy when he stepped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[3250,2122,1680,19285,19286,5896,3249],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155119,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155117\/revisions\/155119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}