SOME SINN FÉIN staff considered resigning en masse in protest over the party’s handling of a senator who allegedly sent inappropriate messages to a 17-year-old.

In a new book by the party’s former press officer Siobhán Fenton, the author recounts how employees were “distraught and furious” with Mary Lou McDonald over revelations surrounding former Seanad member Niall Ó Donnghaile, particularly at how it was handled by party leadership.

Fenton said the criticism McDonald received over the affair was “entirely justified”, with the Dublin Central TD “looking downcast and defeated” when she walked the corridors of Leinster House at the time.

Fenton writes that one staff member broke down in tears at the details, but that she and others decided to stay in their post for two main reasons.

They felt resigning “wouldn’t have any impact” on improving the party’s safeguarding, and out of a “sense of guilt” at leaving their colleagues to carry the workload as Sinn Féin faced into a critical general election.

The controversy surrounded Ó Donnghaile who, in December 2023, resigned unexpectedly from the Seanad citing “health reasons”.

At the time of his resignation, party leader McDonald thanked Ó Donnghaile for serving “diligently” as a Sinn Féin representative and said he gave voice to northern nationalists in the Oireachtas.

It was not until October 2024 that Ó Donnghaile revealed he stepped down from the Seanad and left the party because of a complaint that accused him of sending inappropriate text messages to a teenager.

Former Sinn Féin senator Niall Ó Donnghaile (file photo) RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

Amid spiralling headlines for the party two years ago, McDonald then confirmed that Ó Donnghaile had been suspended from the party as a result of the allegation, in September 2023, months before she issued her statement on his resignation.

McDonald later said that “as a mother” she had regretted her comments praising Ó Donnghaile following his resignation.

Fenton’s new book, Ourselves Alone, sheds light on how staff members in the party’s offices in Leinster House reacted to the news.

The timeline for McDonald’s own statements about the case is also highlighted by Fenton, who details in an earlier section of her memoir that she had been working closely with the Sinn Féin president managing Christmas media interviews in late 2023 – the same week McDonald made her statement praising Ó Donnghaile.

In one of the examples Fenton uses to demonstrate that she was losing her previously central role in the party, she writes that she had never heard anything raised about the senator in this period.

This left her thinking: “I wondered how much I actually knew about Mary Lou or the party at all.”

On the internal reaction, Fenton recalls that “Sinn Féin’s staff were distraught and furious with Mary Lou”.

One morning after “further upsetting news reports” about in that day’s papers, a colleague of Fenton who had worked closely with her “on many of the party’s policies to prevent violence against women and children came into the press office, closed the door behind him, and slumped forward into juddering sobs”.

“Several of the advisers discussed whether to resign but decided that doing so wouldn’t have any impact on improving the party’s handling of safeguarding issues,” Fenton added.

“We also felt a sense of guilt that leaving in the final weeks would mean even more stress and workload for the off who stayed on to the bitter end.”

As their Oireachtas contracts were due to be dissolved in a matter of weeks when the election was called, Fenton noted this would have superseded the notice period staff were required to give.

Fenton, a former social affairs journalist, did indeed stop working for the party after the 2024 general election and has published her memoir about her four years with the party.

Sinn Féin was contacted about the claims in Fenton’s book and did not respond in time for publication.