*Violet Anne Wynne and Donna McGettigan at the 2020 General Election count in Ennistymon. Photograph: John Mangan
SINN FÉIN ALLOWED Violet-Anne Wynne to stand as a candidate in the 2020 General Election because they did not believe she would win a seat, the author of a biography on Mary Lou McDonald has said.
Former Business Editor of The Sunday Independent, Shane Ross has recently released ‘Mary Lou McDonald: A Republican Riddle’ which is a biography on the Sinn Féin leader and the politician many pundits believe will be the country’s first female Taoiseach.
Securing 15 extra seats in the 2020 General Election was a major success for Sinn Féin. Ross admitted that no political analyst has been able to detail if this was a vote for Mary Lou more than the party.
Ross who lost his seat as TD in that election recalled, “They weren’t showing real signs, they had done real badly in the local election beforehand. I think it was probably support for the brand, you’ve people here who elected Violet-Anne Wynne and I think those people were voting for Sinn Féin rather than the candidate. You had one candidate elected in Kildare and she was on holidays, that must be voting for the brand, I think that’s what is what happened, the brand got really strong in the late stages of the campaign, some of that was Mary Lou of course, she was on a high at the time and Sinn Féin suddenly had a late surge which might more naturally have been expected to go to the Greens but it didn’t, it was a two fingers to the major parties vote which she capitalised on”.
Although he was unable to get an interview with Mary Lou for the book, Shane did speak with Clare TD, Violet-Anne Wynne (IND) who resigned from the party this February citing a campaign of “psychological warfare”.
Deputy Wynne spoke of a feeling of being snubbed by McDonald stating that her feminism was “a façade” with the book also revealing that Sinn Féin paid the rent debt owed by the Kilrush woman.
Shane told The Clare Echo, “It’s always very difficult to know who is friends with who in Sinn Féin because they are a very secretive party, she didn’t know a lot of the candidates at all well the last time and they all went and got elected, some of them including Violet-Anne Wynne couldn’t get elected in the local elections but they suddenly had the Sinn Féin brand and Mary Lou behind them so they all got elected anyway and I think that is going to be a difficulty for them, it shows in the Dáil to some extent in that the party is currently represented by seven or eight key people who are really able and the party is very proud of, then there’s all these people who are the surprise successes who they may not have wanted, some of them may get deselected.
“Obviously in this area, there’s going to be a Sinn Féin candidate who will be challenging Violet-Anne Wynne, Violet-Anne wasn’t expected to win, she was a surprise selection and there’s a little bit of evidence that some of those who were elected not her that the party might rather if they were not elected at all, a couple of people have been uncontrollable”.
He believed that the party allowed the Offaly native to stand in Clare despite knowing of her rent difficulties because they believed she would not win a seat. “They let her get the nomination because they didn’t think she would get elected and they just wanted to have someone on the ticket, they never expected it to happen. Violet-Anne’s problems with not having paid her rent became apparent just before the election and she was still elected, she topped the poll which shows the strength of the brand, it was unstoppable, they weren’t very selective about the candidates they put in, they were surprised”.
