Ahead of Sinn Féin’s Think-In earlier today, Mary Lou McDonald said in response to the opposition the party has faced in recent months that it’s become “very, very clear in many communities, who, in fact, the traitors are”.
Asked by presenter Gavin Jennings on Morning Ireland today why videos circulated during the local election campaign of Sinn Féin candidates being chased away from doorsteps in housing estates while being labelled ‘traitors’, McDonald said that “light was shed on all of these matters when the same individuals were seen above in Belfast cavorting with very, very vicious loyalist elements”.
“In fact, marching down the Ormeau road and poking fun at the fact that five innocent Catholics that had been gunned down in Graham’s bookmakers there. I think that spoke to the agenda and the mentality of those who are shouting abuse at anyone,” McDonald said, adding, “And, in fact, I think it has become very, very clear in many communities, who, in fact, the traitors are”.
Describing her party’s commitment to improving the lives of working class communities as “unrivalled,” McDonald said that there was a “concerted effort, lots of it was online”, to attack Sinn Féin.
“The only thing I could conclude, Gavin, actually, from the whole thing, is that those who were shouting all of this abuse fundamentally don’t want change. Fundamentally, they want the status quo. Fundamentally, they don’t want the things, all of the things, that are better for our communities,” she said.
When reminded by Jennings that she said after the election that her party’s policies didn’t reflect public concerns on immigration, and asked what Sinn Féin would do in Government when faced with people who don’t want asylum seekers housed in their area, McDonald said that asylum seekers shouldn’t be housed in the kinds of places where “kids, young people, will go on a Friday evening and eat as much as they can on Friday because they’re not sure that they’re going to eat on Monday, areas that are stretched to that extent”.
There has to be a “conversation with the community – not a veto – a respectful conversation, where people can ask questions and get answers”, she said, adding that a black-and-white picture doesn’t correspond to the reality on the ground.
However, asked repeatedly by the presenter whether her party has identified anywhere in the country that is suitable, according to Sinn Féin’s own criteria, for housing asylum seekers, Deputy McDonald refused to provide any specific locations.
“The suitable places are the places that are not dealing with those levels of want and deprivation and areas where you go and you have the conversations with the community,” she said, adding that “we have to watch social cohesion so that those who do come and who are due protection, that we have the right atmosphere and the right facilities to actually absorb them and embrace them into Irish society”.
On the topic of how many candidates will stand for Sinn Féin in the upcoming general election, which she believes will take place in November despite denials by Taoiseach Simon Harris and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, McDonald said that it will be “hitting 70”, saying that “obviously we are analysing the picture not just statewide, but constituency by constituency”.