Coalition between FF and SF not an impossibility, says Byrne
Fianna Fáil says that a coalition between itself and Sinn Féin is not an impossibility, but would be predicated on Mary Lou McDonald’s party “dealing with the issues” raised by Micheál Martin in the aftermath of Thursday's Dáil votes for Taoiseach.
Party spokesman on education and member of its party’s six-strong negotiating team, Thomas Byrne, said that “unless Sinn Féin deals with the issues set out in the speech” any chance of negotiations between the two parties would be rendered null.
Mr Byrne said: “She didn’t refute any aspect of what he said, they need to be challenged on this."
In a lengthy address following the four failed votes on electing a Taoiseach, Mr Martin said that Sinn Féin’s “efforts to legitimise a murderous sectarian campaign keeps alive a narrative which is used by dissidents to legitimise their campaigns”.
“Every single time an issue arises about the behaviour of people associated with the Provisionals movement and today’s Sinn Féin the response is to attack and dismiss,” the Fianna Fáil leader said.
He made specific reference to the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney in a Belfast pub in 2005, and the fact that current Sinn Féin MLA and Stormont minister, Deirdre Hargey, was in the bar at the time of the incident — a situation which subsequently saw her temporarily suspended from Sinn Féin and dropped as an election candidate at the time.
Mr Martin has since doubled down on his comments in light of the news that Garda Commissioner Drew Harris remains of the opinion that the IRA army council both still exists and is in a position of authority over Sinn Féin itself.
“No matter how hard Sinn Féin representatives try to spin in the media, and no matter how aggressively their trolls try to bully critics on social media, the inconvenient truth keeps popping up,” Mr Martin said in a post on his Twitter account.
“These are real issues that aren’t going away,” he said in his post, which echoed similar sentiments expressed by Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar on the same platform earlier in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Mr Byrne acknowledged that Sinn Féin has garnered a significant mandate in the aftermath of the general election.
He said: “Absolutely they have (a mandate). If people want to go into Government with them then they can but we won’t be doing so and we’ve set out why.”
He denied however that Fianna Fáil’s current approach would lead to another election, nor that such a vote would be problematic for his party: “Why should it lead to another election? It could lead to one if no Government is formed, but that hasn’t been determined by anyone."
“They have the same votes as us, they can try and find someone to go into Government with, we’ll make our own decisions with the mandate that we have.”
Asked how he expects the coming discussions between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to go, he said: "We don’t know. We’ll have constructive talks next week, we’ll see what happens."
