{"id":407744,"date":"2026-04-20T05:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/407744\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:08:10","slug":"fionnan-sheahan-mary-lou-mcdonalds-courting-of-official-ireland-ends-with-fuel-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/407744\/","title":{"rendered":"Fionn\u00e1n Sheahan: Mary Lou McDonald\u2019s courting of Official Ireland ends with fuel protests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Sinn F\u00e9in is back to being a party of protest after the strategy of respectability with the elites backfired\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald tried to woo the middle class. Photo: PA\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f5ac6f8c-6c4c-4ee8-a0aa-08ceb496e484.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald tried to woo the middle class. Photo: PA<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;\u2018Sinn F\u00e9in had realised that water charges were the big issue, after spending the first six days talking about housing. The party made a lot of mistakes during the campaign. The biggest one came on October 8, 2014. Party leader Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald were promising to scrap waters charges in their alternative budget plan in the Alexander Hotel. A reporter asked them if they would be paying their water charges. Adams and McDonald were caught off guard by the question. They both said they would pay their water charges.\u201d \u2013 Michael Brennan wrote in In deep water: How people, politics and protest sank Irish Water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Pardon the pun but the Sinn F\u00e9in leadership\u2019s watery approach cost the party the pivotal 2014 Dublin South-West by-election. The party got outflanked on its left by Paul Murphy, then under the banner of the Anti-Austerity Alliance and now People Before Profit-Solidarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sinn F\u00e9in is back to being a party of protest after the strategy of respectability with the elites&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[171749,3660,61,1629,60,23798,3658,1843,43,7118,19383,6085,70,3415,1419,3476],"class_list":{"0":"post-407744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fuel-protests","9":"tag-gerry-adams","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-irish-water","14":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","15":"tag-micheal-martin","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-paul-murphy","18":"tag-pearse-doherty","19":"tag-rte","20":"tag-simon-harris","21":"tag-sinn-fein","22":"tag-social-democrats","23":"tag-virgin-media-television"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}