One of the features I noted so called Cahill controversy yesterday, is the effect partition continues to have on Irish political discourse. A tongue-in-cheek aside, but the point holds.
I suspect that Senator David Norris’s critical comments in the Seanad the other day were as motivated by Ms Cahill’s direct style of lobbying as any clear or forensic sense of their being ‘something nasty in the Nordie woodshed‘…
But as Ed Moloney points out, there has been little direct engagement by any official representative Sinn Fein with this matter:
It now seems there may have been a reason for that silence and it lies in the fact that six weeks or so ago Gerry Adams’ niece, Sinead Adams was elected Belfast chairperson of RNU.
Sinead is another daughter of Liam Adams, Gerry’s brother who was convicted and jailed for sexually assaulting his other daughter, Aine Dahlstrom.
The news that the party’s president’s niece was elected to a position of leadership in a group that the party was attempting to link to and smear Mairia Cahill with, was not, one presumes, something that Sinn Fein was all that keen to circulate, or even risk emerging in print.
Quite. Perhaps Ms Cahill would have been as well launching into what was in places a nasty cyber attack on her credibility far sooner rather than later. My take from this morning on RTE’s Morning Ireland…
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
