Gavan Reilly: Either Sinn Fein and its TDs respect the Gardai, or they don’t

One aspect of the Brian Stanley affair, no matter how quickly it seems to evolve, deserves a particular level of scrutiny.

The subtext to Sinn Féin’s handling of a complaint against the Laois TD, and the reason it invites so many questions, is because of the party’s complex history with the authorities of law and order. The modern party’s very origins are as the political face of a paramilitary movement which recognised the legitimacy of neither partitioned state on the island, and therefore had no truck with the RUC, the PSNI, or an Garda Síochána.

Those days are past but what the Stanley controversy touches on is how a certain culture appears to remain of trying to launder complaints in-house instead, where appropriate, of simply letting the policing authorities investigate matters.

Brian Stanley deserves rightful scrutiny for apparently cooperating, alongside a solicitor and barrister, with what he now considers a ‘kangaroo court’. Did he think it was a kangaroo court when he introduced a counter-complaint in September? Given he thinks that complaint was worthy of Garda scrutiny, what was his reluctance to go straight to the cops?

We are meanwhile told now that Sinn Féin has relayed the issue involving Stanley to Gardaí out of “an abundance of caution”. Yet the party also contends that it told Brian Stanley to bring his own counter-complaint to the Gardaí a month ago. Which is it?

Each side appears to think it should have been up to the other to bring the matter to the attention of the rightful attention of the Gardaí. Nobody can say that’s an illustration of a party with a healthy culture of respecting the rule of law.