Sinn Féin woes and Brian Stanley’s independent ambition make Laois even tighter – The Irish Times

Eamon Whelan, owner of Dunamase Antiques in Portlaoise, is very clear about Brian Stanley’s chances of retaining his Dáil seat at the next general election, despite the storm surrounding the local TD.

“I firmly believe that he will be re-elected without any difficulty. He’s a good local man,” Mr Whelan said.

Stanley announced his resignation from Sinn Féin on Saturday evening, as part of an internal party investigation following a complaint made against him over the summer, which he compared to “a sort of kangaroo court”.

He has since confirmed he will run for office as an “independent Republican” but has said nothing other than criticizing his former party and rejecting the allegations against him.

Neither side in the dispute has given full details of the complaint filed against the 63-year-old and a counter-complaint from Stanley has not been disclosed.

Sinn Féin referred the complaint and counter-complaint to gardaí last Sunday, in what party leader Mary Lou McDonald later described as “an abundance of caution”.

Stanley, a TD since 2011, topped the polls in the Laois-Offaly constituency at the last general election with more than 16,600 first preference votes.

For the past four years he has been chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the powerful committee of the Oireachtas which has played an important role in investigating issues such as the skyrocketing costs of the National Children’s Hospital and controversies over pay and expenses at RTÉ.

In his Portlaoise shop, Whelan admits he was “a bit shocked” to learn of Stanley’s departure from Sinn Féin. He has voted for Stanley in the past and described him as “very good for the city.”

He predicted Stanley’s re-election and said he would vote for him, not the yet-to-be-chosen Sinn Féin candidate who will replace him on the list.

Others in the city weren’t so sure.

Local resident Freda Byrne has voted for Sinn Féin in the past, but said: “I don’t think he has a chance.” People will read the news reports in recent days and “probably go against him,” she said.

The constituency was split from Offaly for the next election during last year’s boundary review and it now has three tight seats.

Former Fine Gael justice minister Charlie Flanagan retires and the party introduces veteran councilor Willie Aird. The Fianna Fáil candidate is the young Foreign Minister Sean Fleming. Many had assumed that, for the next Dáil, Laois would return one seat each to Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.

However, with Mr Stanley’s plan to run as an independent, this has been thrown into doubt.

A man from the Co Laois town who spoke to the Irish Times at a crowd on Thursday afternoon said he believed Stanley would “always stay with Willie Aird and Sean Fleming”.

On the controversy surrounding the former Sinn Féin TD, he said: “I think it will stop. »

Sinn Féin now faces the dilemma of finding a candidate perhaps just weeks before the election, with speculation centered on November 22 or 29, or even December 6, as the potential date for the vote.

The party’s only councilor in Laois is Stanley’s wife, Caroline Dwane Stanley. She has not made her intentions publicly known as to whether she intends to remain in Sinn Féin amid the conflict between her husband and the party.

Aaron Kelly, an unsuccessful Sinn Féin candidate in June’s local elections who came close to winning a council seat by almost 800 votes, did not rule out a Dáil bid but said the party planned to meet to decide on a candidate.

What happened in the constituency was “completely unexpected”, he said, and “it’s just important now that the party rebuilds itself locally”.

Asked about the prospect of Sinn Féin taking the seat with Stanley running as an independent, he said: “Sinn Féin teams perform at their best when our backs are against the wall.”

“We have every chance of holding it,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon in Portlaoise there was bewilderment and a desire for more information about what was at the root of the dispute between Stanley and Sinn Féin.

It is not difficult to see why, with Stanley and Sinn Féin’s statement and counter-statement in their bitter row last week leading to as many questions as answers.

It began last Saturday evening when local Laois media announced that Stanley had resigned from the party.

He said he would “continue to work as an independent Republican TD on behalf of the voters, who have always treated me fairly and respectfully.”

“In recent months, a certain clique within the party has gone to extreme lengths to damage my reputation and personality,” he said.

“Following a ‘complaint’, I was recently referred to an internal ‘investigation’ within the party. Given what happened and the work of my legal team, what is very clear is that this process lacked objectivity, was seriously flawed and lacking in impartiality.

Of the internal investigation, he said: “In many ways it resembles a kind of kangaroo court. »

Sinn Féin hit back on Sunday, insisting that Stanley’s rights “have been protected throughout this process”, stressing that he was represented by a barrister and barrister throughout.

The party forwarded the complaint and counter-complaint to gardaí on the same day.

The Irish Times reported on Monday that Sinn Féin’s internal investigation concluded that the complaint against Stanley was founded, that he had breached the party’s code of ethics and found serious misconduct against him.

On Monday morning, McDonald told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland in a lengthy radio interview that if the initial complaint had been criminal in nature, “it would have gone directly to An Garda Síochána”.

Stanley released a statement welcoming that “Sinn Féin has belatedly referred the “complaint” and questions regarding it to the gardaí”.

He had been pushing for this for some time, he said, and it should have happened in September when he and his legal representative “brought certain serious matters to the attention” of the party’s investigation.

“Mary Lou McDonald rightly stated that the complaint against me was not of a criminal nature,” he said, but he called Sinn Féin’s statement that her rights had been “completely incorrect.” been protected throughout the process.

Then there were Tuesday’s debates in the Dáil, where the government put pressure on Sinn Féin on various child protection issues.

The Dáil’s statements come after Sinn Féin was questioned in recent weeks over the case of the party’s former press secretary Michael McMonagle, who was convicted of child sex offenses in the North.

( Timeline of the Michael McMonagle controversy, from 2021 arrest to Sinn Féin apologyOpens in a new window )

During his contribution to the Dáil, McDonald separately detailed how former senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, a former mayor of Belfast, was suspended from the party in September 2023 after Sinn Féin learned he had sent inappropriate text messages to a 17-year-old party member.

She also took the opportunity to discuss Stanley’s resignation from Sinn Féin, which she said had nothing to do with child protection issues.

McDonald said the complaint filed against Stanley “pertains to an incident that occurred in October 2023 and concerns Deputy Stanley’s personal conduct, leaving the plaintiff, in her words, traumatized and distressed.”

Stanley’s counter-complaint against the complainant is “very serious”, McDonald told the Dáil.

She insisted Sinn Féin had responded to the complaint and counter-allegations “correctly and fairly”.

Stanley then accused McDonald of abusing Dáil privilege with his remarks “in a desperate attempt to distract from his own party’s practices regarding a ‘complaint’ against me, the contents of which I refute”.

On Wednesday morning, Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty described Stanley’s claim that the McDonald’s Dáil comments about his situation were an attempt to distract from Sinn Féin’s practices as “absurd”.

Stanley “took it upon himself,” he said.

“We have not made public the details of his complaint. That would not be appropriate,” he said. “But it’s up to Brian to come forward and be transparent, if he wants to be.”

The same day, Stanley’s lawyers said no further statements, press releases or interviews would be released from him.

Residents of Portlaoise, in the Stanley constituency, do not know the full circumstances of why a popular local TD had such a spectacular falling out with the party to which he devoted four decades of his life.

Norah Deay, a local resident, said she had voted for him in the past and would like him to provide further explanation.

( If Mary Lou had stayed with Fianna Fáil, she could be closer to becoming the first female taoiseachOpens in a new window )

“It’s horrible to see this ambiguity,” she said.

Regarding Sinn Féin’s chances in the constituency, she said she believed the party “shot itself in both feet with everything recently”.

“It seems like one thing piling on top of another. So I don’t know,” she said.

Malachy McNulty, another person who previously voted for Stanley, said he was “open-minded” to the idea of ​​voting for him again.

“The sooner he reveals what happened, the better,” he said.