opponents. Progressive Democrat TD for Dun Laoghaire, Fiona O’Malley highlighted the sale of paramilitary souvenirs in Sinn Féin shops. She said the sale of T-shirts bearing the logo ‘IRA – UndefeatedArmy’ and lapel pins with the slogan ‘Sniper at Work’ were helping to fund Sinn Féin election candidates. (This issue has been raised in more recent times by Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin.)When asked at the time if she approved of the ‘Sniper at Work’ badges, McDonald turned the question around and replied: ‘Look, what I don’t approve of is the endless gimmickry that the PDs are indulging in.’ Asked if she would wear an ‘IRA – UndefeatedArmy’ T-shirt, she deftly responded that she did not wear T-shirts at press conferences.45
An Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll published on 21 March surprised many when it showed McDonald ahead of outgoing Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna in a battle for the last seat in Dublin. The election team of Fianna Fáil’s Eoin Ryan were watching McDonald like hawks. When they discovered that she had described herself as a ‘peace negotiator’ and ‘full-time public representative’ on the ballot-paper, they complained to the Returning Officer’s staff. Ryan said:
I am not aware of any position to which Ms McDonald has been elected by the public. Her claim to be ‘a peace negotiator’ requires clarification. What peace has she negotiated and with whom? If she can describe herself as a peace negotiator, then so is every member ofOireachtas Éireann. The Sinn Féin candidate’s claim to have been elected by the people to any office is utterly bogus.46
However, the Returning Officer said there were no formal rules as to what titles could be used by candidates, other than people claiming to represent parties which did not exist. Mark Hennessy observed in the Irish Times on 2 June 2004 that Sinn Féin’s policy on the European Union had developed from outright opposition to ‘critical engagement’. Noting that the party’s best hope for success in the election was Bairbre de Brún in the North, he added: ‘One seat in the Republic would be a tremendous result.’
The European and local government elections took place on 11 June, and McDonald won the fourth and final seat in the Dublin Euro-constituency to become the party’s first MEP in the 26 counties. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour all held their Dublin seats but McDonald beat the Green Party’s Patricia McKenna into fifth place, with 60,395 first preferences compared to the latter’s 40,445. McDonald’s share of the vote at 14.32 per cent was more than double the 6.64 per cent that Seán Crowe scored for Sinn Féin in the same constituency at the previous European election in 1999.47 It was the small hours of the morning when her election was announced, and Frank McNally captured the atmosphere of the occasion in his report:
Mary Lou McDonald was carried shoulder-high from the RDS count-centre early yesterday. Outside, right on cue, a ghetto-blaster struck up the old Country and Western favourite: Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart). But, the habitual noisy part of the Sinn Féin celebrations over, the new MEP then called her campaign workers into the sort of huddle favoured by football teams. It was a larger huddle than any football team’s, because Sinn Féin have a lot of workers, and McDonald happily acknowledged her debt to them. Among other things, she assured the huddle that this was not Mary Lou McDonald’s seat – it belonged to Sinn Féin. Even at 3.30 am, the message was unblurred and the campaign zeal unrelenting.48
Transfers are of major importance in the Irish electoral process. It has always been a major challenge for Sinn Féin candidates to attract second or other preferences in the system of Proportional Representation. But McDonald broke through the barrier on that occasion. And as well as winning two seats in the Strasbourg parliament, Sinn Féin doubled its representation on the local authorities. The following month, it was announced that the new Sinn Féin MEPs would be part of the United European Left/Nordic Green Alliance (GUE/NGL). Sinn Féin had hosted a Belfast visit by the group the previous March. A high proportion of its members were communists or former communists. However, Bairbre de Brún said this would not affect Sinn Féin support in the US: ‘I think people in America will take a commonsense approach.’ At time of writing GUE/NGL also includes the Greek ruling party, Syriza, Spain’s Podemos and an Independent MEP for the Midlands-North-West constituency in Ireland, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan.49
There is no such thing as government and opposition in the European Parliament, so committee membership is vitally important. McDonald was appointed to the committee on Employment and Social Affairs, as well as becoming a substitute member of the committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. After the election campaign, the new MEP was back in the eye of the storm when she was among those who carried the coffin of Joe Cahill, one of the founders of the Provisional IRA, who died on 23 July 2004. A letter-writer in the Irish Times said: ‘Pictures of Mary-Lou McDonald carrying the coffin of that monster Joe Cahill shocked me to the bone.’ The letter concluded: ‘I want my vote back!’ The episode surfaced again in a Sunday Independent article by Emer O’Kelly on 24 October 2004, under the headline: ‘We should start to see Mary Lou as the enemy’. Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione had been nominated as the EU’s Justice Commissioner but his conservative Catholic views on homosexuality and the role of women in society aroused opposition among MEPs. O’Kelly wrote:
One of those questioning (and indeed damning him) was that well-known defender of civil liberties, Ms Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin MEP...She is a representative of the political wing of a subversive private army dedicated to the overthrow of the Irish State...When Joe Cahill, described as a ‘veteran republican’ died a few months ago, just weeks after Ms McDonald was elected to Europe, she helped carry his coffin to the grave. Cahill’s republicanism, veteran or otherwise, included a string of murders ar son na h-Éireann [Trans: on behalf of Ireland].
The Minister for Justice in the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats government at the time, Michael McDowell, appeared on Today FM’s Sunday Supplement show with McDonald on 17 October 2004. When he said the IRA Army Council made all the key decisions for the republican movement and that senior figures in Sinn Féin were members of that body, McDonald challenged him to name them. McDowell replied: ‘If you really did want me to name them, you would then accuse me of trying to wreck the peace process.’ McDonald said: ‘I have no balaclava. Sinn Féin is a democratic party and we are part of the political mainstream. Sinn Féin is no safe haven for criminality.’50
Sinn Féin was caught up in a whole range of controversies throughout 2005. Possibly the most damaging, because of the horrific circumstances, was the murder of thirty-three-year-old father of two, Robert McCartney, from the mainly-nationalist Short Strand area, who was attacked outside a Belfast pub on the night of 30 January 2005. Republicans were blamed for the killing, and the dead man’s sisters launched an international campaign to achieve justice. The incident was condemned by Sinn Féin and there was a bizarre statement by the IRA that it was willing to shoot McCartney’s killers. Prior to the party’s ardfheis in March of that year, McDonald said: ‘Sinn Féin couldn’t have been more crystal clear in our condemnation of that murder and calls for people to come forward with information.’51
On 9 May 2005, McDonald and de Brún found themselves isolated at the European Parliament, when a motion condemned the McCartney murder and also criticised Sinn Féin for alleged failure to cooperate in the investigation. MEPs backed the resolution by 555-4, and there were 48 abstentions. Unionist MEPs joined with colleagues from an Irish nationalist background in supporting the proposal. McDonald and de Brún backed a separate motion that was less critical of the party and the IRA, but which supported the McCartney family’s efforts to bring those responsible to trial.52
The next Irish general election was very much on the party’s mind, and McDonald was being groomed for the Dublin Central constituency although another Sinn Féin candidate nearly took the seat on the previous occasion. In the previous general election in 2002, Councillor Nicky Kehoe, a former republican prisoner, only missed out by 57 votes. Normally, a candidate with such strong local support would be expected to run again, but it was clearly a Sinn Féin priority to get McDonald into the Dáil. Kehoe supporters were reported to be unhappy with the leadership decision.
