Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald has insisted she is in politics for the long haul as she vowed to lead her party into government after the next general election.
Ms McDonald said she was “only getting started” when pressed on whether she had the appetite for another five years in opposition.
The party leader said she had not given up on her ambition to be taoiseach but acknowledged opposition parties on the left needed to work more coherently in the next Dail term so they can demonstrate to voters what an alternative coalition might look like.
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald (Brian Lawless/PA)
She said hearing about the everyday challenges facing people she spoke to on the election campaign drove her sense of purposes, energy, stamina and resilience.
“I am an Irish mammy and we should never ever be underestimated to stick the going, especially when the going gets a bit sticky and a bit tough,” Ms McDonald told reporters in Belfast.
“I’m in this for the long haul. Sinn Fein is in this for the long haul. We have a vision.
“We have a plan for Ireland, around equality, around reunification, and I will work for that every single day. We have a great team nationally. We’re a national organisation. We have a big job of work to do, and I fully intend to lead from the front.
“And I fully intend, when the next general election comes, that I will lead Sinn Fein again, a strong, talented, committed team, and we will do everything that we can to ensure that next time out that the outcome is different and that we are very much in the reckoning and in the driving seat for government.
“That means a lot of hard work between now and then.”
She added: “For us in Sinn Fein, it is still very much game on.
“We are a formidable, strong political force nationally, all across the island. We’re not in government on this occasion, I wish it were different, but that’s as it is now.
“But we will continue to work, we will continue to grow, we will continue to advance, and we will have our moment, and we will have our opportunity for government.
“I’m only a young one. You need to go and read my biography again. Sure, I’m only getting started.
“I’m only getting into my groove. So this is about developing Sinn Fein’s politics, about growing our party.”
Asked what Sinn Fein needed to do differently in opposition in the Dail to secure a breakthrough into government after the next election, Ms McDonald conceded that the party faced a challenge to create a shared sense of purpose with other left-leaning parties.
“Our first job, constructively, but also very vigorously as the leaders of the opposition, is to hold the Government to account, but also to try and force a change in policy and a change in direction,” she said.
“In doing that I think there will have to be an increased sense of cohesion, of collaboration between parties on the opposition benches.
“And just remember, we are all very different political parties. We are not all the same.
“We shouldn’t try to create that impression, but it is important on the key issues, housing in particular, I think it is in everybody’s interest that we have a shared sense of purpose and that we act cohesively.
“And in the general election, people ask the question, well, if it’s not Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, if it’s not the same old same, what does an alternative government look like in real terms?
“And I think we have an opportunity now, in the coming months and over the next period, to start actually presenting that in a more coherent way.
“So is that a challenge? It will be challenging, but I think it’s also an opportunity, and it will mark, I think, a difference or a step change from the last Dail.”