If Sinn Féin wants to govern this country, it has to be able to take criticism as well as give it

The party’s double standards regarding ‘champagne-gate’ versus its handling of Bobby Storey’s funeral are telling – and the implications worrying

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, Gerry Adams and Michelle O’Neill at the funeral of Bobby Storey in June 2020. Sinn Féin has said that it advised people to stay away, and that the funeral was live-streamed on Facebook, yet hundreds attended the graveyard service. Picture: Liam McBurnley/PA

The entrails of the controversial and so-called champagne party in Iveagh House were laid bare at an Oireachtas committee last Tuesday. Simon Coveney, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was grilled extensively about the impromptu get together on June 17, 2020, when Ireland was elected to the United Nations security council. The celebration would have been perfectly understandable in normal times, but was inexcusable during a pandemic.

John Brady, the Sinn Féin TD, led the charge ...