Sinn Féin's difficulty over Michael McMonagle

The events surrounding Michael McMonagle's departure from Sinn Féin have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues.

The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to a series of sex offences.

The offences occurred on various dates between May 2020 and August 2021when McMonagle was employed by the party.

Since then, Sinn Féin politicians have been pushed to explain how the party dealt with this case.

During the period in question McMonagle was directly employed in a full-time position by Michelle O'Neill and then Jemma Dolan and paid through the staffing allowance granted to MLAs by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

McMonagle was employed by O'Neill, who was at the time deputy first minister, from 2 March 2020 to 31 May 2020, and then by Dolan from 1 June 2020 to 8 July 2022.

In a previous mandate, McMonagle was employed jointly by former Sinn Féin MLAs Daithi McKay and Mitchel McLaughlin in a full-time position from 6 May 2014 to 31 October 2014.

He also worked as press officer for the party in the north west and at Westminster.

In August of 2021 McMonagle was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the next day he informed the party of this and he was immediately suspended from his role.

About a year later in June of 2022, his employment with Sinn Féin was terminated.

In September of 2022 McMonagle got a job with the British Heart Foundation using references provided by Sinn Féin press officers Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley.

The charity said neither reference had mentioned the ongoing police investigation nor McMonagle's suspension from his previous employment.

It was when these references came to light at end of September this year that people started to ask questions of Sinn Féin.

Then at the beginning of October, the chief constable of the PSNI Chief Constable said that warning a charity about a potential police investigation into McMonagle would not have prejudiced the investigation, contradicting Conor Murphy.

Murphy later said he was "happy to accept" the chief constable's view.

Later that month a photo emerged showing Michelle O'Neill and McMonagle attending the same event in Stormont's Great Hall while he was working for the British Heart Foundation.

He carried the charity's banner as they entered Parliament Buildings and mingled inside taking videos for the charity.

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member Doug Beattie said he found it "hard to believe" that O'Neill "didn’t notice her former colleague" at the Stormont event.

O'Neill maintains that she did not.

And then the British Heart Foundation released a statement.

The charity said that their head, Fearghal McKinney, had a phone call with O'Neill in which she "agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF’s due diligence process were unhelpful".

Additionally, the charity said it told a senior Sinn Féin HR official about the McMonagle references in August 2023, contradicting statements made by Murphy and O'Neill.

O'Neill confirmed this and said the contact between the charity and Sinn Féin's HR department was not brought to the attention of the party's leadership at the time.

She described this as "a serious omission".