Question of where real power lies in Sinn Féin highlighted by Covid Inquiry

Party insists the deleted messages would not reveal how it governed during the pandemic

Where does real power lie in Sinn Féin? With the leaders we see or the leaders unseen? When the UK-wide public inquiry into the Covid pandemic arrived in Belfast three weeks ago, I thought the answer to that question would become clearer.

Last Thursday, the inquiry left Belfast and the answer isn’t as clear as it should be because Sinn Féin disregarded the rules. Yet that in itself says a lot.

Michelle O’Neill’s appearance before the inquiry provided significant insight into the woman hand-picked to succeed Martin McGuinness as

Sinn Féin’s northern leader.

O’Neill has been carefully protected by Sinn Féin and rarely does in-depth, difficult interviews. It has been widely observed in journalistic circles that before a Northern Ireland election, the toughest broadcast interview, with the BBC’s Mark Carruthers, involves Sinn Féin generally sending Mary Lou McDonald or Conor Murphy rather than O’Neill.

Recently, she did a 45-minute filmed interview with businesswoman Caroline O’Neill, who began by gushing about the First Minister’s “amazing work” and said: “Obviously I’m overwhelmed because you’re here as the First Minister and it’s the first time I’ve ever done a podcast like this with someone in your position.” A grilling it was not.

At the Covid Inquiry, Michelle O’Neill faced a rather less fawning interlocutor, Clair Dobbin KC. The west Belfast-born barrister has represented the US government in its attempt to extradite Julian Assange. It was the most rigorous examination O’Neill has ever faced in public, and she floundered. Some of her answers went round in ever more absurd circles as contradiction was laid upon contradiction.

In one area, she was found to have misled the inquiry. In another, she gave the impression she couldn’t understand clear words on a page. At some points, the dissection was excruciating. The following day, former first minister Arlene Foster received a similarly unsparing examination and reminded the public of her haughtiness.

But O’Neill’s experience was far more significant. Foster is now out of politics. Even before that, she had faced multiple ferocious interviews and a devastating examination at the public inquiry into the cash for ash scandal, which tarnished her reputation. She had far less to lose than O’Neill.

The most significant aspect of O’Neill’s evidence was the revelation that she consciously and deliberately deleted every message from her work phone, her personal phone, her iPad — indeed, from every electronic device she had used while in office. She had, she admitted, “cleansed” them of all data.

She did so despite being warned by the head of the civil service to retain any evidence relevant to the inquiry and despite being given clear written legal advice that specifically said to retain text messages and WhatsApps. O’Neill’s explanation to the inquiry was that while she had wiped all her devices, she was sure she had never used messages for anything other than “occasionally” communicating about “logistical or administrative matters” like arranging the time of a meeting.

She said unambiguously: “I did not use these platforms for any policy, financial or political discussions of our response to Covid.” That wasn’t true — and we only know that because Foster handed in messages that showed they had been in regular discussion by text about how to handle Covid and Executive business.

Another Sinn Féin minister, Carál Ní Chuilín, used the same phrase as O’Neill, saying she only used text messages “occasionally” for “logistical and administrative issues”. She said she changed her personal phone and “lost some text messages”.

Similarly, another Sinn Féin minister, Deirdre Hargey, said she used texts for “logistical and administrative issues only”. She said she accidentally lost all her personal messages while changing phones.

Thus far, the inquiry hasn’t published a single message from Sinn Féin. By contrast, more than 1,000 WhatsApp messages between the

DUP top brass, some deeply embarrassing for the party, were given over. Among those is the suggestion that Sinn Féin wasn’t really being run by those the DUP were dealing with.

At a March 10 Executive meeting, O’Neill wasn’t pushing for schools to close. The following day, the Republic shut its schools. The next day, O’Neill backed Northern Ireland taking a different course, in line with the chief medical officer’s advice. But suddenly that changed overnight and she demanded

Sinn Féin’s First Minister has simply destroyed the evidence of her internal discussions during the pandemic

schools shut immediately.

A day after that, DUP minister Edwin Poots said in a message to colleagues: “Ted Howell must have given her the call to get the harmonisation kicked in to place, thus the overnight conversion or should I say coercion [sic].” Seven months later, he referred to junior minister Declan Kearney as “Mary Lou’s poodle/attack dog”.

Howell’s name is significant. Northern Ireland’s last major public inquiry, the RHI Inquiry, uncovered evidence of his unseen power. When Sinn Féin finance minister, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, faced a decision worth hundreds of millions of pounds over reining in spending on “cash for ash” in 2017, his top civil servant believed Ó Muilleoir was “acting under instruction”.

He approached Howell and two other veteran republicans with strong IRA links, Padraic Wilson and Martin Lynch, who have no elected role and are largely unknown to the public, and asked Howell if he would be “content” for him to sign off on the decision. Howell didn’t say yes, but summoned the minister to a meeting with “the usual suspects” on the Falls Road. The meeting, of course, wasn’t minuted. We know that, because

Sinn Féin gave over evidence to that inquiry. This time, Sinn Féin’s First Minister has simply destroyed the evidence of her internal discussions during the pandemic.

When I interviewed Mary Lou McDonald four months after she took over from Gerry Adams in 2018, she bristled at the idea that anyone was “pulling my strings”, yet in the same sentence referred to the party having “a collective leadership”, saying: “That’s where the power is.”

In 1979, Sinn Féin’s course for new members instructed them that “Sinn Féin is not a secret or illegal organisation. Its activities are legal and are carried out in full view of the public”. Sinn Féin insists nothing in the deleted messages, the wiped computers, the lost phones, the deleted WhatsApps or any of the other material would be relevant to understanding how it governed during Covid. The party is the sole arbiter of that, which is just the way it likes it.

If that’s “in full view of the public”, then I’m Taylor Swift.