There's no Army Council pulling my strings, says Mary Lou McDonald

But it is precisely because of the apparent nature of the change at the top of a party which is a key force on both sides of the Irish border that Mrs McDonald’s views on the organisation out of which modern Sinn Fein grew – the Provisional IRA – are now facing considerable scrutiny.

Does the switch from a Sinn Fein leadership which was at one point also the leadership of the IRA to one which was never involved in terrorism extend to putting greater distance between the party and the violence of the past?

Or will Sinn Fein’s leadership in perpetuity have to endorse the actions of the Provisional IRA, given that the party stemmed from the gunmen and bombers?

Whatever the answer to that question, it is clear that Mrs McDonald is enthusiastic about projecting the sense that something significant has changed with the passage of power from Gerry Adams to her four months ago.

The very fact that she is doing the interview with a newspaper whose readership is overwhelmingly unionist is a break with the past. Although Gerry Adams did an interview with the News Letter more than a decade ago, Martin McGuinness and Michelle O’Neill both agreed on several occasions to sit down interviews but a suitable date could never be found.

By contrast, Mrs McDonald sat down for the 40-minute interview a week after agreeing to it.

Sitting in the Houben Centre, the former Holy Cross school just yards from the Ardoyne roundabout interface, I asked Mrs McDonald if she believes her predecessor’s claim that he was never in the IRA – a claim which is disputed by republicans, historians and members of the security forces.

“I do, yeah,” she said, adding that they discussed the issue. When asked why her predecessor did not join the IRA, she said: “I think he’s on the record himself dealing with these things over a long period of time.

“What I find in dealing with people as a rule is that they are the experts on their own lives and their own experiences. Gerry doesn’t have a conviction for IRA membership and I think he’s explained the politics of how he’s come to be involved in republicanism and Sinn Fein when Sinn Fein was barely in existence and he’s given all of that narrative. I speak for me.”

While Mr Adams’ IRA role may be largely an issue of the past, the PSNI chief constable has recently restated the police belief that the IRA Army Council still exists, and a government report three years ago stated that members of Sinn Fein believe that the Army Council still controls the political party.

Mrs McDonald dismissed that claim – although she said she is “not going to get into a ding dong” with the chief constable, part of a wider theme during the interview of steering clear of verbal conflict.

“I look to the streets for the evidence of what’s going on and it is manifestly clear that the campaign is over, that the war is over, that the IRA have gone away. They’ve made statements to that effect, weapons have been decommissioned, an apology has been made, etc, etc. So that says to me that there is no IRA. That’s the objective evidence I’m looking at.”

However, Mrs McDonald – whose persona is that of an independently minded leader – is clearly concerned at the potential perception that she is not the real leader, but a puppet of unelected IRA men.

Saying that “this thing is put to me with a view to suggesting that somehow Sinn Fein is in thrall to another structure”, the Dublin TD said forcefully: “I want to be absolutely clear because I know all about Sinn Fein because I’m its leader: Sinn Fein takes its decisions for Sinn Fein; I’m the leader of the party; we have a collective leadership; that’s where the power is; that’s where the decisions are made – that and when we meet in open session at our ard fheisanna [annual conferences] – and to suggest that there is anybody pulling my strings, putting words in my mouth or telling me what to do is asserted by people who either don’t know me at all or are doing it for the purposes to trying to undermine and to cast doubt.”

When asked if that situation has changed in Sinn Fein over the almost two decades she has been a party member, she said: “Well in my experience Sinn Fein has always been an independent political party; Sinn Fein is not the IRA; Sinn Fein is an independent structure.

“Twenty years ago, and before, bear in mind there was a process under way to broker a peace agreement ... so of course there were interlocutors and there were discussions with the IRA and with IRA figures for those purposes.”

Whereas during the Troubles the IRA had primacy over Sinn Fein in republican ideology, Mrs McDonald insisted that now Sinn Fein is not only the “dominant” force within republicanism but is “the only force”.

Mrs McDonald says that although she would encourage former IRA members to participate in truth recovery and the other Troubles legacy structures under consideration by the government, she cannot guarantee their cooperation.

Mrs McDonald said she believes it is “important that the structure are established, that they are credible and that people come forward and cooperate fully – and by that I mean everybody.

“So of course I will use my leadership, my position to assert again and again and again and to encourage everybody – whatever section of society they come from, whatever perspective, to participate fully. Of course, I can’t force people to do it.”

Does that mean she has no authority to say to the IRA ‘you must cooperate’?

“No, but nobody has the authority to force anybody – wherever they’re coming from. You can’t force people to participate. But I would certainly encourage – I think people are honour-bound, once the infrastructure is established ... I think everybody should participate and cooperate fully. That’s my position; that’s the position of Sinn Fein ... but I can’t, no more than anybody else, force people to participate.”

Mrs McDonald famously described Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy as “a good republican” prior to his imprisonment in the Republic for major tax evasion and a BBC Spotlight allegation in 2016 that Murphy had been head of the IRA.

She stands over that comment, saying it is a view to which she still subscribes, adding: “Tom is a person I’ve met a handful of times. He always struck me as a decent, nice person.”

And a tax evader?

“Well, his tax I’ve no truck with tax evasion and he has to pay his taxes the same as anyone else – and if he doesn’t, then he faces the penalty for it. I’m not advancing an argument to support or give cover to anybody who evades his taxes.”

She said that Murphy is not a member of Sinn Fein.

The peace process is “like life itself – it continues”, Mrs McDonald said, but insists that should not be an impediment to a normalisation of politics.

She said that in the south the civil war was “the big unspoken story for a very long time in Irish society – that was one way of dealing with the conflict that had happened” and that “marred and scarred” the political landscape for generations.

She said that “the peace process is not something that you just say ‘that’s done now’ – that would be daft”.

Some unionists want to see a move from the peace process to a more normalised political landscape, but Mrs McDonald said that was not at variance with what she was saying.

“Of course it’s possible. Normality is absolutely essential and if you call it ‘the normalisation of politics’, of course. But at the core of that – at the core of a stable society is not just the absence of conflict, but you have to have a sense of shared civic values, you have to have a sense of shared social responsibility, you have to have a space and clear space for different narratives of the past.”

The Sinn Fein president described Peter Robinson’s recent speech in which he suggested the DUP and Sinn Fein “make the problem bigger” by adding more issues on the table in a bid to get Stormont back as “an interesting approach”.

She said that the speech, which also touched on serious planning for a possible border poll, was “in parts very progressive”. But Mrs McDonald is reluctant to be drawn on another of Mr Robinson’s ideas: That generational border polls be held. That would have the potential of being attractive to unionists by guaranteeing a longer period of stability, if unionism won each vote, than would be case under the minimum seven-year gap between such polls as stipulated in the Belfast Agreement.

And it potentially could be viewed by some republicans as having merit because they would have the guarantee of knowing that border polls definitely would happen at set intervals, rather than the current uncertain reliance on the secretary of state’s analysis of whether such a poll could be won by nationalism.

Mrs McDonald interprets the former DUP leader’s remarks as a concession “that the issue of a referendum on unity is ... on the cards”.

However, she appears sceptical in tone about what would be a significant change to the 1998 Agreement: “The Good Friday Agreement is clear. Partition remains on the basis of 50% plus one – that’s the basis and the logic for it. So equally the removal of the border is to be accounted for in a democratic plebiscite and democracy works on that basis of 50% plus one.”

Then, in comments which implicitly suggest that despite Sinn Fein’s repeated calls for a border poll there is a recognition that much further work is required before the could realistically happen, she added: “There’s a whole conversation before you would even land on putting the question. There’s a whole conversation that needs to happen right across this island – and unionism needs to be part of that.”