CAROLINE DWANE-STANLEY, WHOSE husband Brian left Sinn Féin earlier this year, has announced that she has left the party.

The Laois county councillor said she was leaving over how “the party leadership dealt with the controversy” and to “draw a line under 2024”. Stanley said she had hoped she would receive “some support and assistance…to try and deal with these matters”.

Earlier this month, party leader Mary Lou McDonald told The Journal that “there are issues there that need to get ironed out” with Caroline Dwane-Stanley and that the party would speak to the councillor in the new year.

Dwane-Stanley added in her statement, posted last night on Facebook, that the “time is right for me to draw a line on 2024 and resign, look to the future and embrace what I hope will be a better political future” in the time ahead.

It brings to an end her 13 years serving as a councillor for Sinn Féin on Laois County Council, although she will continue to serve as what she called an independent republican councillor for the Portlaoise/Abbeyleix municipal district. Brian Stanley has done similar since leaving Sinn Féin and continues to stand as an Independent TD for Laois.

In her statement, Dwane-Stanley also said:

“I have resigned from Sinn Féin with immediate effect. During my 27 years of membership, I worked diligently to advance the objectives of the party. I met and worked with some great republicans on that journey and will always cherish those memories.

“I have given this careful consideration and reflection over the recent past and decided to resign my membership of Sinn Féin.”

She added that while the party has “always prided itself on the values of equality and in particular supports for women in politics”, she claimed that in her in my case this was a “fallacy”.

McDonald interview

When speaking to The Journal earlier this month, McDonald confirmed that she had not spoken to Dwane-Stanley in recent months but intended to talk to her in the coming weeks. McDonald said:

“I haven’t had reason to be speaking to her, but we will be in communication with her come the new year. I understand like it’s a dilemma,” the Dublin TD said.

McDonald added at the time that there was a “complicated dynamic” as Dwane-Stanley was still a party member while her husband had resigned.

The Sinn Féin president believed that “most people looking at that situation would say that’s a very tricky one for anyone on a human level”, referring to Dwane-Stanley.

She also was “not surprised” that the councillor was supporting her husband over recent months. “Like, why would she not do that,” Mconald said.

In October, when her husband had only recently left the party, she was nominated by Sinn Féin to be their sole representative on the Committee of the Regions in Europe.

The committee is primarily a consultative and advisory body representing local and regional government at EU level and nominees must be elected representatives of regional or local bodies.

Brian Stanley was a high-profile TD for Sinn Féin before his resignation from the party in October after a fallout stemming from an internal investigation the party was carrying out after a complaint was made against him at the end of July “by a longstanding member of the party”.

The complaint was not criminal, the Sinn Féín leader said at the time, but McDonald said it was “very, very serious”. McDonald told the Dáil that the matter had been referred to gardaí after Stanley raised a counter-complaint.

Brian Stanley deemed it a “kangaroo court” at the time and announced that he would be leaving the party after 40 years of membership. He went on to take a seat in the Laois constituency as an Independent TD, ahead of the new Sinn Féin candidate.

At the time of his resignation in October, senior party members criticised Stanley for over his use of the term “kangaroo court” in his departing statement.

Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan claimed this was “deeply disingenuous and very loaded” phrasing, while the party’s justice spokesperson Pa Daly said the presence of a barrister and solicitor for Stanley at the internal meetings made it a “very strange kangaroo court”.