Fintan O’Toole: The way to protect democracy is always through more and deeper democracy: more checks and balances, more effective means of calling those in power to account
If the party is to get into government it will be as part of a coalition. But so far Sinn Féin seems to be making little real effort to build relations with the parties it would need as partners: Labour, the Greens, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit. Or, indeed, Fianna Fáil.
These uncertainties mean that the current Government parties can still convince themselves that they do not have to concede the high probability of Mary Lou McDonald becoming Taoiseach – and therefore don’t have to do anything to prepare for it.On the other side of the equation there is a need to avoid hysteria about Sinn Féin. It has long since ceased to be a revolutionary party. Its arrival in government would not be the seismic event it would once have been.
McDonald now insists that Sinn Féin has completely dropped its former article of faith, which was that it did not recognise the legitimacy of the State. She dismisses any suggestions to the contrary as “silly”. But it’s only three years ago that we had David Cullinane, while celebrating his own huge vote in Waterford, shouting “up the ‘Ra” and his election agent Michael Doyle telling ecstatic supporters that “we broke the Free State”.
So what should the Government be doing to anticipate this eventuality? It should be strengthening Irish democracy by making it more tamper-proof. Without resorting to scaremongering it should ask itself a basic question: how would you go about limiting the capacity of any government to undermine the democratic nature of the State? Three very obvious things come to mind.
What we already know is that Sinn Féin cynically exploits its all-island status to raise money in the North in ways that are banned in the South. The party has received, for example, €4.6 million from the will of an English donor – even while the legal limit for individual donations to parties in the Republic is €2,500.
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