Annus horribilis for Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin in Laois after Stanley row

The late Queen Elizabeth II made an unforgettable remark in 1992 when reflecting on a year that culminated in the separation of her son Charles from Princess Dianna.

The year included several scandals involving her family and a terrible fire in Windsor Castle, one of the Queen's official residences.

“1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis,” said the late queen in a speech in November of a year that marked her Ruby Jubilee on the throne.

No Sinn Féin leader would take easily to being compared with the utterances of a British monarch. However, Mary Lou McDonald would find it difficult to argue against a conclusion that 2024 has been an annus horribilis or horrible year for the party she leads in Laois.

The year started with the party in an ambitious mood in a county where it has had a TD since 2011 and a councillor since 1999. Brian Stanley’s election to the Dáil in 2011 was one of the big wins for the party around the country.

The party’s political poster boy had won a seat in a constituency where Brian Cowen had recently been Taoiseach. He unseated Fianna Fáil’s Laois TD John Moloney who was a close ally of the former Taoiseach.

His victory was a cause of Sinn Féin delight for other reasons. It was a win in rural Ireland for a politician with potential to remain a long term Sinn Féin TD. This expectation was primarily based on a big reputation for constituency work.

His win also showed the party what could be done in other constituencies where voters are slow to change. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

Brian Stanley watches his then party leader Gerry Adams being interviewed on RTÉ at the 2011 Laois Offaly General Election County Centre in Tullamore. Pic: Alf Harvey

And so it proved for Sinn Féin in Laois and elsewhere. Dep Stanley comfortably retained his Dáil seat in 2016 when Laois was split from Offaly for the first time. He was seen to have been instrumental in helping the now independent Carol Nolan spring a surprise for the party in Offaly in the same General Election. The party also made gains in other rural constituencies.

The Laois TD was a front bench member for the party while in the Dáil after his first two election wins.

The biggest triumph in the Brian Stanley / Sinn Féin success story came in 2020 when he topped the poll for the party in the reunited Laois Offaly constituency. Carol Nolan kept her seat albeit as an independent.

The result raised the TD’s standing in his party and led to Mary Lou McDonald picking him for one of the plum jobs that an opposition TD can hold in Leinster House. Dep Stanley was appointed to chair the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee.

It’s always one of the highest profile jobs in the Dáil as it inevitably deals with high profile money wastage topics. In Dep Stanley’s case, the RTÉ / Ryan Tubridy controversy ensured that he was one of the most recognisable names in the last Dáil.

It was a job that he arguably was fortunate to hold onto. He had hardly taken up the role in 2020 when some social media tweets about IRA killings led to calls for his resignation. However, Ms McDonald stood by him in the Dáil when he made a speech to clarify his position.

Pictured: Brian Stanley and Mary Lou McDonald in Portlaoise when they were both in Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin is normally a party that puts its brand before individual politicians. This gives them the freedom to chop and change safe in the knowledge that it can retain its Dáil and council seats regardless of the candidate.

For some reason the party did not take a ruthless approach to its operations in Laois. The Sinn Féin and Brian Stanley brand were inseparable and unbreakable. Arguably, this has proved to be a bad mistake culminating in its 2024 imposion.

Brian Stanley’s Dáil electoral success never materialised into major success at the crucial county council level.

He was the only Sinn Féin county councillor in Laois when he won the seat in Leinster House back in 2011. He was succeeded in County Hall by his wife Caroline Dwane Stanley.

With Sinn Féin leaving Laois to the Stanley ‘machine’, his wife easily retained her seat in the Portlaoise area at the 2014, 2019 and 2024 local elections.

However, in more than a decade of having a TD in Laois, the party never made a significant breakthrough at council level.
Cllr Dwane Stanley and Portarlington-based Aidan Mullins were the only Sinn Féin representatives returned at local elections in 2016, 2019 and 2024. Both were shunned by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and found themselves frustrated in largely powerless technical groupings after each poll. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

Brian Stanley celebrates the 2024 local election victory of his wife Caroline at the Count Centre in Portlaoise with supporters. Pic: Alf Harvey

All big parties run into big constituency problems sooner or later. However, most are overcome by the safety nets of having solid local organisations and sitting councillors.

In the case of Sinn Féin in Laois, the reliance on Stanley meant that there was no local structure to respond to a crisis if he wasn’t around. So along comes 2024 when the proverbial manure hits the Sinn Féin fan in Laois.

Unbeknownst to many the problems date back to October 2023 when Brian Stanley had an interaction with a female Sinn Féin member in Dublin. That incident represented the falling of the domino that would see the party with no representation in Laois for the first time in a quarter of a century as Brian Stanley was elected to the Portlaoise Town Commission in 1999.

The party had big ambitions in 2024 in Laois. It ran its biggest Laois team of candidates in the local elections. The campaign fell flat in June when just two candidates were returned to County Hall. The others were well down the field in their Municipal District races.

None of their new or repeat candidates benefited from having a TD in the county or running alongside Cllr Mullins and Cllr Dwane Stanley who were both comfortably returned.

The bad day for Sinn Féin nationally at the June local elections masked a deeper malaise for the party in Laois which would explode in the second half of the year.

The first big blow to the party came in August. Cllr Mullins resigned from the party after being suspended by HQ over social media posts that led to complaints about him within the party.

A member since the 1970s when Sinn Féin and Republicans were a pariah, he said the party was out of touch. Losing a councillor is a blow but losing a TD was a disaster for a party going into a General Election that was shaping up to be a bad one for Sinn Féin. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

Aidan Mullins celebrates victory in the 2024 local elections in Portlaoise with supporters including Brian Stanley when both were in Sinn Féin. Pic:Alf Harvey

Brian Stanley’s resignation in October was one of a series of controversies engulfing the party in the run into national poll.
He didn’t go quietly, accusing Sinn Féin of operating a kangaroo court of which he was the victim. His departure was the subject of national headlines plunging Sinn Féin and its leader Mary Lou McDonald into a crisis.

He left with the intention of running in the General Election as a self-declared independent Republican in the new Laois constituency.

His resignation was followed by the departure of the Laois Sinn Féin branch chairperson and other rank and file members.
The controversy rumbled on further in the run-up to the national poll with the woman who made a complaint about Dep Stanley giving interviews to the national media.

While Sinn Féin found in her favour in the provisional outcome of its inquiry, she was also critical of the party’s handling of the complaint.

Roll on the General Election and barbs were exchanged between Dep Stanley and Sinn Féin, especially its leader Mary Lou McDonald. She called on him to 'man up' in one of her two visits to Laois during the General Election campaign.

Sinn Féin did manage to regroup. Maria McCormack was selected as its candidate despite having polled just over 200 first preference votes in the Portlaoise area the the local elections. Party organisers from Northern Ireland were drafted in to help local members to mount a campaign.

Ms McDonald came to Portlaoise for a well-attended selection convention which was chaired by one of its Northern MPs.
The campaign was helped by the endorsement of Cllr Aidan Mullins but he remained outside the party. However, while Cllr Dwane Stanley did not resign from the party, she was not at the Convention. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

Mary Lou McDonald speaks at the Laois General Election Covention to select Maria McCormack, seated, as Sinn Féin's candidate. Pic: Leinster Express.

It’s not clear the extent to which Cllr Dwane Stanley canvassed for her husband but she was nowhere near Sinn Féin’s efforts to retain the seat.

Her support for her husband and anger with Sinn Féin was quite apparent at the start of December when her husband was about to be deemed elected to the Dáil.

The Portlaoise woman cut loose in her scathing criticism of Sinn Féin over their election campaign and treatment of her husband. She stopped short of announcing her resignation from the party saying more questions have to be answered.

These stringent comments were a precursor to an inevitable split from Sinn Féin which materialised just after Christmas with the decision to quit the party. In some ways, Mary Lou McDonald will be relieved as it saved her party from having to instigate what would have been another messy disciplinary process that likely would have seen her suspended or expelled.

So, Sinn Féin begins 2025 with no public representative in Laois.

It can’t be other than a political disaster for the party especially since there is no local or General Election in sight to regain lost ground quickly. 

While Ms McCormack fared well for Sinn Féin, Ms McDonald and local members are facing an extremely uphill battle to win back the support and trust of voters in Laois where voting patterns tend to be slow to change.

While the Sinn Féin leader might be relieved that her horrible year in Laois is finally over, a horror spell on the political sidelines lies ahead.

It’s clear that the party has lost a lot in Laois in 2024 but there are no real winners. Brian Stanley will have less clout in Leinster House where Sinn Féin has more TDs than Fine Gael.

The former Laois Sinn Féin councillors will also have to ply their trade without the backup of a national head office.
Ultimately, the biggest losers are the thousands of voters who cast their votes for Sinn Féin in the local, European and General elections will have no representative in Laois.