Editorial: Conor Murphy won't have to appear before covid inquiry, meaning Sinn Fein again evades scrutiny

​During the election, Michelle O’Neill was the only one of the five biggest party leaders to duck three of four key interviews or debates.

The ​Sinn Fein first minister for Northern Ireland missed the BBC Radio Talkback interview, the UTV debate and BBC TV debate. She was interviewed on the BBC TV programme The View.

Different republican politicians stood in for Ms O’Neill, including – on Talkback – Conor Murphy. When he began to be asked about the Bobby Storey IRA funeral mass covid breach Mr Murphy said he could not answer that because he was due to appear before the coronavirus inquiry, which he had been unable to do in Belfast because he was ill.

The interview moved on. Thus Sinn Fein was able, first, to have its Stormont leader avoid such interrogation (does the party think her unable to handle it?), and second have its substitute politician close down one of the hardest question it faced. The party that had been most sanctimonious about lockdown then, when an IRA leader it adored died, treated funeral rules with contempt.

Ms O’Neill then defiantly she would never apologise for attending a friend’s funeral, as if she perhaps didn’t understand that the issue was not a litmus test of your loyalty to a friend but rather a) consistency, in adhering to the funeral restrictions you imposed on thousands of other people who did not get to say a proper goodbye to a loved one and b) leadership, in that if you demand and preside over such limits you must set an example.

SF must have been delighted that investigations into the funeral were so tepid.

Now it turns out that Mr Murphy won’t have to appear before the inquiry, making the evasion of questioning yet worse. It is like the Whatsapp messages. SF deleted theirs, the DUP didn’t. Who faced most scrutiny? The latter of course. They did the right thing, kept their messages and had them pored over.