Money is the under-appreciated factor in the Sinn Féin press officer scandal. Michael McMonagle was employed at the party’s central press office between 2014 and 2022. He was suspended in 2021 following his arrest over child sex offences.
It appears that for some or all of this period, McMonagle was paid from a Stormont assembly expenses fund that should only be used for constituency workers, not party staff. Records obtained by the Belfast Telegraph show McMonagle was employed on and off by a series of Sinn Féin assembly members rather than by the party itself.
The fund’s rules were tightened in 2016 to prevent it being spent on “public relations services”. This was to stop press office work being passed off as constituency work, yet from 2020 McMonagle was again listed as employed by assembly members, including Michelle O’Neill, then the deputy first minister. Stormont has another fund to pay for party staff, which Sinn Féin had presumably claimed to the maximum.
McMonagle’s unorthodox employment must at least partly explain the apparent confusion over who was responsible for him.
Sinn Féin’s arrogant belief it can do whatever it wants with every penny it can get causes problems even it struggles to contain
The scandal broke last month when it emerged that two other Sinn Féin press officers gave........