Major shifts in Irish politics are like the buses. You wait ages for one, and then two come together, more or less. The decimation of Fianna Fáil and rise and rise of Fine Gael and Labour in 2011 was the first. It was so comprehensive that people speculated that the two victorious parties might dominate for two or even three elections.

Not so. The public tired of the bitter pills that were doled out by the Government, to clean up the mess created by Fianna Fáil. Their stars have declined, spectacularly so in the case of Labour, with a concomitant rise in support for Sinn Fein and a variety of Independents.
This new dispensation may be with us for a while. The Shinners have put in the hard yards at local level and that tends to pay off. Indeed, they’d remind you of the Fianna Fail of your grandfather’s time, an organisation that was famed for its local graft and fixing, as well as its dedication to getting the vote out (early and often, it was joked).
Latterly however, Sinn Fein’s own brand of dodging and weaving has been reminiscent of Fianna Fail in more recent times, when the taint of corruption undermined the original soldiers of destiny, followed by the tsunami of the banking crisis.
The Shinners are mired in a controversy of a very different kind – but their response to date has been far from impressive.
The controversy arises from the personal testimonies of individuals who were sexually abused by members of the IRA. The latest to step forward is Paudie McGahon, who spoke publicly about being raped, for the first time, on a BBC Spotlight programme last week.
So far, at an organisational level, the republican movement has reacted to these revelations of embedded sexual abuse much as did the Catholic Church and its religious orders. No one knows for sure the scale of what went on within the so-called republican family. To be fair, a small number of perpetrators may have been responsible for the abuse that did take place. But the reaction of leading members of Sinn Féin, both when the victims originally came forward, and again now, has been grossly inadequate, to an extent that grievously undermines their personal and political credibility.
Considerable skills in obfuscation, evasion and distraction, not to mention verbal sophistry, have repeatedly been deployed. The Roman Catholic concept of “mental reservation”, defined by Cardinal Desmond Connell in the context of the Church’s response to allegations of clerical sex abuse, springs to mind.
“... You are not permitted to tell a lie,” he explained. “On the other hand, you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be...”
For example, Gerry Adams said that he believed Paudie McGahon, when he said he had been raped – but when asked if the young Louth man had been brought before an IRA kangaroo court, he said he didn’t know.
Look, we now know how bad things were in Ireland as regards the abuse of children and vulnerable people by members of the clergy; we know how widespread the abuses were; we know that the Church and religious authorities knew of the problem; and we know, too, how loathsome individuals – loathsome criminals – were transferred from one place to another, giving them the opportunity to abuse others. We have also seen how expertly the religious organisations involved have tried to wriggle away from making retribution other than apologies.
We also know that, if a victim was brave, or indeed desperate, enough to make an accusation, typically she or he first had to face a Church inquisition, an experience that would make all but the staunchest, or perhaps the most foolhardy, blanch.
But bad as the clerics were, an IRA inquisition carried a great deal more menace. You’d have to be very brave to make an accusation against a senior member of a movement that murdered people as a matter of routine. And in fairness, at the conclusion of an inquisition by the Catholic Church, no victim of clerical sex abuse was offered a choice of whether the perpetrator be shot in the head, locked in a room with the accuser who was to be armed with “whatever implements that you want to deal with the situation yourself” or exiled. But these are the twisted options that were offered to Paudie McGahon.
Yes, the Church and orders often opted for the last of these, for example with the odious Brendan Smyth, and were rightly lambasted for doing so. But who knows how many cases there were in the IRA – and how many victims opted for either the first or second choice?
You have to ask: what kind of people – and what kind of organisation – could have thought that it could ever be right to impose a choice of that kind on someone who had been raped at the age of just 17?
Even in the face of the grotesque horror-show which these kangaroo courts represent, and what they say about the leadership of the republican movement, and about their values, Sinn Fein so far seems to have maintained its unity. Many of its members and elected representatives in this jurisdiction don’t carry the baggage of the Troubles. They are ambitious for power. But they are also loyal to the leadership in a way that is very hard for outsiders to fathom.
Sinn Fein may well be in the shakeup for government in 2016. They point to their experience in Northern Ireland as evidence that they are ready to rule. But the administration there is bankrolled by the UK taxpayer. As regards demonstrating a capacity to govern an independent state, that is another matter entirely. Elsewhere parties have to be far more prosaic and realistic. And transparent.
Sinn Fein has been used to guerrilla politics, harrying and deriding opponents from the safety of opposition. The more they look like a party that might get into government, the more they will come under scrutiny and attack themselves. Pleading media bias won’t cut any ice, especially since they themselves have so relished media revelations about others.
The revelations of rape and sex abuse empshasise that there are fault lines, over which it will be very difficult to paper. No other party has been conjoined with a ruthless military wing. Sinn Fein is not the IRA, but historically they were two sides of the one coin. One accepts that everything has moved on. But when we hear that, as late as 2002, the IRA were running kangaroo courts and offering to murder people, the implications are too recent and too chilling to ignore.
The all-Ireland inquiry they have called for is just another platform for what-aboutery. So what if other people were doing bad things too?
Everyone has to take responsibility for their own actions – and inactions. And in this regard, members of Sinn Féin have been badly exposed. Could that be a second bus, just behind the first one?
The Hog