{"id":171014,"date":"2024-11-08T18:45:13","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T18:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/08\/sinn-feins-difficulty-over-michael-mcmonagle\/"},"modified":"2024-11-08T18:45:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T18:45:13","slug":"sinn-feins-difficulty-over-michael-mcmonagle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/08\/sinn-feins-difficulty-over-michael-mcmonagle\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinn F\u00e9in’s difficulty over Michael McMonagle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sinn<\/div>


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\"BBCBBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michael McMonagle pleaded guilty to 14 charges<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The events surrounding Michael McMonagle’s departure from Sinn F\u00e9in have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues.<\/p>\n

The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months<\/a> after pleading guilty to a series of sex offences.<\/p>\n

The offences occurred on various dates between May 2020 and August 2021when McMonagle was employed by the party.<\/p>\n

Since then, Sinn F\u00e9in politicians have been pushed to explain how the party dealt with this case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During the period in question McMonagle was directly employed in a full-time position by Michelle O’Neill and then Jemma Dolan and paid through the staffing allowance granted to MLAs by the Northern Ireland Assembly.<\/p>\n

McMonagle was employed by O’Neill, who was at the time deputy first minister, from 2 March 2020 to 31 May 2020, and then by Dolan from 1 June 2020 to 8 July 2022.<\/p>\n

In a previous mandate, McMonagle was employed jointly by former Sinn F\u00e9in MLAs Daithi McKay and Mitchel McLaughlin in a full-time position from 6 May 2014 to 31 October 2014.<\/p>\n

He also worked as press officer for the party in the north west and at Westminster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"NINI Assembly<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michael McMonagle was directly employed by Sinn F\u00e9in MLA Jemma Dolan for two years<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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In August of 2021 McMonagle was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the next day he informed the party of this and he was immediately suspended from his role.<\/p>\n

About a year later in June of 2022, his employment with Sinn F\u00e9in was terminated.<\/p>\n

In September of 2022 McMonagle got a job with the British Heart Foundation using references provided by Sinn F\u00e9in press officers Se\u00e1n Mag Uidhir and Caol\u00e1n McGinley.<\/p>\n

The charity said neither reference had mentioned the ongoing police investigation nor McMonagle’s suspension from his previous employment.<\/p>\n

It was when these references came to light at end of September this year that people started to ask questions of Sinn F\u00e9in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Conor<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Conor Murphy said it was \u201cinexplicable\u201d the references were provided for Michael McMonagle<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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When the references they had written were revealed, Se\u00e1n Mag Uidhir and Caol\u00e1n McGinley resigned from the party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stormont\u2019s Economy Minister Conor Murphy<\/a> said it was \u201cinexplicable\u201d the references were provided and Sinn F\u00e9in had only became aware of them the previous week.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one was informed, no permission was sought, no advice was sought in relation to dealing with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Murphy was asked by the BBC why the party had not informed the British Heart Foundation of what it knew about McMonagle.<\/p>\n

“Seriously, the BBC asking me these types of questions,” he responded.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe have a legal responsibility not to interfere with the police investigation.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill denied knowing that McMonagle had taken up a new job with the charity and said there were lessons in terms of “due diligence for an employer when they take on an employee\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in’s stance was that it did not know about the references, did not know about his new job, that it was up to the British Heart Foundation to vet their employees and that it could not have alerted the charity to anything without risking prejudicing the case against McMonagle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michael McMonagle (highlighted far left) attended the same event as Michelle O’Neill (in pink jacket with her back to the camera)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Then at the beginning of October, the chief constable of the PSNI Chief Constable said that warning a charity about a potential police investigation<\/a> into McMonagle would not have prejudiced the investigation, contradicting Conor Murphy.<\/p>\n

Murphy later said<\/a> he was “happy to accept” the chief constable’s view.<\/p>\n

Later that month a photo emerged showing Michelle O’Neill<\/a> and McMonagle attending the same event in Stormont’s Great Hall while he was working for the British Heart Foundation.<\/p>\n

He carried the charity’s banner as they entered Parliament Buildings and mingled inside taking videos for the charity.<\/p>\n

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member Doug Beattie said he found it “hard to believe” that O’Neill “didn\u2019t notice her former colleague” at the Stormont event.<\/p>\n

O’Neill maintains that she did not.<\/p>\n

And then the British Heart Foundation released a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The charity said that their head, Fearghal McKinney, had a phone call with O’Neill in which she “agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF\u2019s due diligence process were unhelpful”.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the charity said it told a senior Sinn F\u00e9in HR official about the McMonagle references in August 2023, contradicting statements made by Murphy and O’Neill.<\/p>\n

O’Neill confirmed this and said the contact between the charity and Sinn F\u00e9in’s HR department was not brought to the attention of the party’s leadership at the time. <\/p>\n

She described this as “a serious omission”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"ReutersReuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mary Lou McDonald has ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures”<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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So why did so much of what senior Sinn F\u00e9in figures initially said about how the party handled the issue change?<\/p>\n

Speaking in the D\u00e1il on 15 October<\/a>, Sinn F\u00e9in president Mary Lou McDonald that the case has highlighted “issues and shortcomings” in the party’s internal procedures.<\/p>\n

She said she has ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures” in the party.<\/p>\n

“We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she said.<\/p>\n

McDonald said that this overhaul would “clarify for the avoidance of doubt, for any member of staff or any member of the party as regards procedures, what needs to be communicated and flagged and to whom”.<\/p>\n

BBC News NI offered Sinn F\u00e9in the opportunity to give a comment for this article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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BBC Michael McMonagle pleaded guilty to 14 charges The events surrounding Michael McMonagle’s departure from Sinn F\u00e9in have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues. The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to a series of sex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171015,"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":[55951,110401,133010,151,3249],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014"}],"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=171014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171016,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014\/revisions\/171016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}