‘Awful ambiguity’: Sinn Féin’s woes and Brian Stanley’s independent ambition make Laois even tighter

Eamon Whelan, the owner of Dunamase Antiques in Portlaoise, is very clear on Brian Stanley’s chances of retaining his Dáil seat in the upcoming general election, despite the storm surrounding the local TD.
“I firmly believe he will be re-elected without any difficulties. He’s a good local man,” said Mr Whelan.
Stanley announced his resignation from Sinn Féin on Saturday night amid an internal party inquiry into a complaint made against him during the summer which he likened to “a type of kangaroo court”.
He has since confirmed he will contest the election as an “Independent republican” but said little else aside from criticising his former party and rejecting the allegation made against him.
Neither side in the dispute has outlined the full detail of the complaint made against the 63-year-old and a counter-complaint from Stanley remains undisclosed.
Sinn Féin referred the complaint and counter-complaint to the gardaí last Sunday out of what party leader Mary Lou McDonald later described as “an abundance of caution”.
Stanley, a TD since 2011, topped the poll in the Laois-Offaly constituency in the last general election with more than 16,600 first preference votes.
During the last four years he served as the chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the powerful Oireachtas committee that has been prominent in investigating issues such as the spiralling cost of the national children’s hospital and pay and spending controversies at RTÉ.
In his shop in Portlaoise, Whelan admits to having been “a bit shocked” when he heard about Stanley’s departure from Sinn Féin. He voted for Stanley in the past and described him as “very good for the town”.
He predicted Stanley’s re-election and said he would vote for him, not the yet-to-be-picked Sinn Féin candidate who will replace him on the ticket.
Others in the town were not so sure.
Local woman Freda Byrne voted for Sinn Féin in the past but she said: “I don’t think he has a chance”. People will read the coverage of recent days and will “probably go against him”, she said.
The constituency was split from Offaly for the next election in last year’s boundary review and it is now a tight three-seater.
Former Fine Gael minister for justice Charlie Flanagan is retiring and the party is running veteran councillor Willie Aird. Fianna Fáil’s candidate is junior foreign affairs minister Sean Fleming. It had been assumed by many that, for the next Dáil, Laois would return one seat each for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
However, with Mr Stanley’s plan to run as an independent, this has been thrown into doubt.
One man in the Co Laois town who spoke to The Irish Times on a walkabout on Thursday afternoon said that he believed Stanley would “still get in along with Willie Aird and Sean Fleming”.
Of the controversy surrounding the former Sinn Féin TD, he said: “I think it will blow over.”
Sinn Féin has the dilemma now of finding a candidate perhaps just weeks before the election, with speculation centring on November 22nd or 29th, or even December 6th, as the potential date of the vote.
The party’s only councillor in Laois is Stanley’s wife Caroline Dwane Stanley. She has not made her intentions known publicly on whether she intends to stay in Sinn Féin amid her husband’s dispute with the party.
One unsuccessful Sinn Féin candidate from June’s local election, Aaron Kelly, who came close to winning a council seat with almost 800 votes, did not rule out a Dáil bid but said the party plans to meet to decide on a candidate.
What has happened in the constituency was “completely unexpected”, he said, and “it’s just important now for the party to rebuild locally”.
Asked about the prospect of Sinn Féin’s holding the seat with Stanley running as an independent, he said: “Sinn Féin teams perform our strongest when our backs are against the wall”.
“We have every chance of holding it,” he said.
In Portlaoise on Thursday afternoon, there was puzzlement and a desire for more information over what was at the root of Stanley’s dispute with Sinn Féin.
It is not difficult to see why, with the statement and counterstatement from Stanley and Sinn Féin in their bitter dispute over the last week leading to as many questions as answers.
It began last Saturday night when the news broke on local media in Laois that Stanley had resigned from the party.
He said he would “continue working as an Independent republican TD of behalf of constituents, who have always treated me in a fair and respectful manner”.
“In recent months a certain clique within the party have gone to extreme lengths to damage my reputation and character,” he said.
“On foot of a ‘complaint’ I was recently brought before an internal party ‘inquiry’. Given what has transpired and the work of my legal team, what is very clear is this process lacked objectivity, was seriously flawed and was devoid of impartiality.”
Of the internal inquiry, he said: “In many ways it resembled a type of kangaroo court.”
Sinn Féin hit back on Sunday, insisting Stanley’s rights “were protected throughout this process”, pointing out that he was represented by a solicitor and a barrister throughout.
The party referred the complaint and counter-complaint to the gardaí on the same day.
The Irish Times reported on Monday that Sinn Féin’s internal inquiry concluded that the complaint against Stanley was true, that he had breached the party’s ethics code and made a finding of gross misconduct against him.
On Monday morning, McDonald told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland in a lengthy radio interview that had the initial complaint been of a criminal nature, “it would have gone straight to An Garda Síochána”.
Stanley released a statement welcoming that “Sinn Féin has belatedly referred the ‘complaint’ and matters concerning it to the gardaí”.
He had pushed for this for some time, he said, and it should have happened in September when he and his legal representative “brought certain serious matters to the attention” of the party’s inquiry.
“Mary Lou McDonald has stated correctly that the complaint made against me is not of a criminal nature,” he said, but he described Sinn Féin’s statement that his rights had been protected throughout the process as “totally incorrect”.
Then came Tuesday’s proceedings in the Dáil, where the Government piled the pressure on Sinn Féin over separate child protection issues.
The Dáil statements came after Sinn Féin faced questions in recent weeks over the case of former party press officer Michael McMonagle, who has been convicted of child sex offences in the North.
[ Michael McMonagle controversy timeline from 2021 arrest to Sinn Féin apologyOpens in new window ]
During her Dáil contribution McDonald separately outlined how former Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, a former lord mayor of Belfast, was suspended form the party in September 2023 after Sinn Féin learned he had sent inappropriate text messages to a 17-year-old male party member.
She also used the time to address the resignation of Stanley from Sinn Féin, which she said was in no way related to matters of child protection.
McDonald said the complaint made against Stanley “relates to an incident that took place in October 2023 and relates to Deputy Stanley’s personal behaviour, leaving the complainant, in her words, traumatised and distressed.”
Stanley’s counter-complaint against the complainant is “a very serious one”, McDonald told the Dáil.
She insisted Sinn Féin responded to the complaint and counter-allegation “in a correct and a fair manner”.
Stanley later accused McDonald of abusing Dáil privilege with her remarks “in a desperate attempt to shift the focus from her own party’s practices regarding a ‘complaint’ against me, the contents of which I refute”.
On Wednesday morning senior Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty dismissed as “nonsense” Stanley’s claim that McDonald’s Dáil comments about his situation were an attempt to shift the focus from Sinn Féin’s practices.
Stanley was “lashing out”, he said.
“We have not put the details of his complaint into the public record. It would not be appropriate,” he said. “But it is for Brian to come forward and to be transparent, if he so wishes.”
The same day Stanley’s solicitors said that no further statement, press release or interview would be forthcoming from him.
Locals in Portlaoise in Stanley’s constituency are none the wiser about the full circumstances of why a popular local TD had such a spectacular falling out with the party to which he devoted four decades of his life.
Local woman Norah Deay said she had voted for him in the past and she would like him to offer further explanation.
[ Had Mary Lou stuck with Fianna Fáil, she could be closer to becoming first woman taoiseachOpens in new window ]
“It’s awful to see the ambiguity,” she said.
On Sinn Féin’s chances in the constituency, she said she thinks the party “has shot themselves in both feet with everything recently”.
“It just seems like one thing piling on top of another. So I don’t know,” she said.
Malachy McNulty, another person who previously voted for Stanley, said he was “open-minded” about voting for him again.
“The sooner he comes out with whatever happened, the better,” he said.