The co-ordinated weekend statements from Sinn Féin and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) were clearly an effort to draw a line under a controversy that has resulted in adverse publicity for both.
But it’s stretching credibility to ask the public to believe senior Sinn Féin representatives were unaware of a series of serious safeguarding failures
Michelle O’Neill spoke by phone to BHF chief executive Fearghal McKinney on Saturday morning at the end of a week that saw Sinn Féin representatives raise questions about the rigour of the charity’s recruitment process after it employed the party’s former press officer while he was under investigation for sexual offences.
Michael McMonagle worked at the heart of Sinn Féin’s Stormont communications team alongside Seán Mag Uidhir, one of the two press officers who wrote him a reference for his new job with BHF. Suggestions that McMonagle’s duties were confined to Derry and the north-west are erroneous.
His employment with the party was terminated three months before he began to work for the charity in September 2022 as communications and engagement officer.
The 42-year-old, from Limewood Street in Derry, last month admitted a series of sex offences, including attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.
According to BHF, his role with the charity did not require any safeguarding checks. It’s also very likely that without any convictions to his name, no red flag would have been raised had checks been carried out.
The press release issued by the charity on Saturday said Ms O’Neill “agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF’s due diligence process were unhelpful, and she expressed regret for the damage and upset this has caused to our dedicated staff and supporters”.
Sinn Féin offered a rather different take, saying the first minister apologised “for the hurt and distress caused by their {the former press officers’} actions”.
She said she was “deeply sorry that they (BHF) have been caught up in this unacceptable situation” but notably the Sinn Féin press statement did not mention or include a specific apology for the remarks about the charity’s due diligence or recruitment process.
But the inconsistencies in the account of the phone conversation notwithstanding, the statements revealed another embarrassing fact that highlights either flaws in Sinn Féin’s governance or holes in the account of the episode the party is providing.
Both BHF and Sinn Féin have confirmed that in August 2023, after McMonagle was charged, the charity contacted the party’s unnamed, “former” human resources manager to, according to Ms O’Neill, “verify the email address and identity of the senior press officer who had provided the reference the previous year which the HR manager did”.
The first minister, who said she learned of the email last Thursday, said the contact was not brought to her attention “or the attention of the Sinn Féin leadership, at that time”.
She described it as “a serious omission”.
It remains unclear if this apparently serious oversight on the part of the HR manager led to their dismissal or whether Sinn Féin has made the person’s new employer aware of what looks like a major professional failing.
This is the latest in a series questions that remain unanswered or to which the explanations provided so far appear weak.
We are asked to believe that Michelle O’Neill and other senior party representatives knew nothing about the references until late last month and that despite knowing McMonagle was a suspected sex offender, failed to spot him a matter of yards away at Stormont and at Westminster when he was working for BHF.
Is it credible that the party’s HR manager learned of the unauthorised references written by party press officers for a suspected paedophile yet seemingly chose not to tell anyone in authority?
While some have suspended their critical faculties based on loyalty, most of us have been left thinking that the account which is slowly emerging doesn’t add up. Each statement designed to bring the curtain down on the saga merely opens up a fresh line of enquiry.
It is of course regrettable that the family of Daithí Mac Gabhann have been drawn into this episode, but the energies of those attacking the media on social media would perhaps be better expended asking Stormont’s biggest party why its safeguarding procedures failed so spectacularly.
