SF leader talks up prospect of Border poll

Seamus Enright

“To visit the beautiful county of Cavan of course,” replies Mary-Lou McDonald, as if there could be simply any other answer to the question of just why she is in the locale on an otherwise overcast Wednesday evening. She’s in full schmooze mode, though the Sinn Féin president needn’t be.
If the sole purpose were a tourist trip to the Breffni region, then that would have been perfectly understandable. More digestible perhaps, what with the Dáil in recess and the country some 67 days away from European and local elections, is that the party would further press the agenda for a Border poll amid the British Brexit brouhaha and what uncertainties that creates for our nearest neighbours in the North.
It doesn’t take long for the facade of idle chit-chat to crack and for the Dublin Central TD, herself a former Dublin MEP (2004-09), to get down to business.
“There is no pressing burning reason for the visit, bar the fact that certainly Brexit is looming large. It’s a huge concern for the whole island, but it has a particular significance for the Border and people in the Border regions.”
It has undoubtedly been one of the top topics discussed as Deputy McDonald fitted in a  packed itinerary. She was followed to the Slieve Russell by a gaggle of Sinn Féin supporters and representatives, among them MEP Matt Carthy, General Election hopeful Pauline Tully, and local councillors Noel Connell and Damien Brady.
But the party leader’s Cavan agenda had, at that stage, already taken her the length and breadth of Cavan, from the County Museum in the morning to Baileborough at midday where she met members of North East Pylon Pressure Committee (NEPPC).
A trip to the Holy Family School in Cootehill, now in newly decamped facilities, was followed then by a visit to the Quinn Packaging facility in Ballyconnell in the afternoon where she would hear about the importance of free movement at the border post-Brexit from QIH executive, Kevin Lunney.
Following media commitments, the day was to be rounded off by an informal discussion with local community leaders in the Farnham Arms Hotel in Cavan Town. Those in attendance included Darkness into Light, Cavan Multicultural Network, local businesses, Traveller representatives, and a spokesperson on behalf of the LGBT and Cavan Disability Network.

Rural redevelopment
Back to Brexit, and on that issue if there is to be a “silver lining”, Deputy McDonald believes it will force Irish politics and policy to change tact away from filling cities and larger urban centres, and refocus its efforts on rural investment and redevelopment.
“Whatever way Brexit lands, there is going to be no happy ever after for us. It’s going to cause difficulties for us. It’s going to change the relationship, however substantially, with the island of Britain. It will also change our positioning, and the whole tempo of politics at European level. It’s a seismic shift, and I think as an island we have to look again at how we do things.”
The prospect of a Border poll therefore she believes is as much of a certainty as her being asked to talk about Brexit upon visiting the region in the first place.
“I think if Brexit has done anything, it has amplified very loudly that the Border on this island is a liability for all of us - the fact that people elected to a parliament on our neighbouring island that can take decisions that can override the democratic wishes of people in the north of Ireland on Brexit.”
Asked again, why Sinn Féin don’t use their seats at Westminster to break the Brexit deadlock, she says: “We have no business at Westminster. Westminster is not the parliament that will serve our needs. Those parliaments that serve our needs as a people are in Dublin and Belfast.”
She adds: “I wouldn’t ask anybody to do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do, and I would not be willing to swear an oath of allegiance to a foreign power.”

Stormont Executive
As far as power-sharing in Stormont is concerned, Deputy McDonald laments that she and others had thought they “had it cracked” following discussions almost a year ago.
“I thought we had landed on a fair accommodation. There is no point in harping on about those, but I remain very disappointed that the DUP walked away from the accommodation we had brokered.”
Did it involve First Minister  elect, and leader of the DUP Arlene Foster stepping down in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Cash for Ash’ controversy? Deputy McDonald says “no”. She does though admit that the Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme fallout was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in the first instance.
To put the institutions of Government back in place, Deputy McDonald points to the need for “partners” committed to power sharing.
“For that to work you have to have people signed up to that notion - of equality, of joint progress. It’s essential to move the North and the island generally beyond a past that was about division, conflicting rights, and a notion of what we have we hold, into a new era of what we have we share.”