Sinn Féin leader to apologise to victim of senator’s behaviour 13 months after she found out
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. Photo: PA
A teenager was 16 – and therefore a child in the eyes of the law, north and south – when a Sinn Féin senator sent him inappropriate messages.
The party admits it doesn’t know if those messages were sent from a phone south of the Border, where senator Niall Ó Donnghaile was a member of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Yet gardaí were never contacted under child protection laws, even for “an abundance of caution”, to borrow Mary Lou McDonald’s favourite phrase. Neither were his actual employers in the Oireachtas, where child protection laws are drafted, informed of any issue.
