Gerry Adams says calls for Sinn Féin to boycott St Patrick's Day visit to US are ‘inconsistent’

Mary Lou McDonald hailed Gerry Adams as “our leader” as the former Sinn Féin president said Palestinian people will understand the party’s decision to visit the United States for St Patrick’s Day.

Mr Adams, the former Sinn Féin president, was speaking at a local election party fundraiser in the Naomh Fíonnbarra GAA club in Ms McDonald’s Dublin Central constituency on Friday evening.

Ms McDonald, who interviewed Mr Adams for nearly an hour, described her predecessor as “our friend, our inspiration, our leader” at the outset of the event.

She said Ireland and Sinn Féin’s relationship with the US is “kind of complicated”, telling Adams: “On the one hand, huge solidarity and very much on the right side of our peace process and yet very much on the wrong side in respect of Palestine.

“I am putting this to you because it is a bit of a talking point across our movement; people are thinking about that.”

Amid calls for Sinn Féin to boycott planned visits to Washington DC for St Patrick’s Day in March over the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Mr Adams said these calls were inconsistent.

“Some folks are saying the Sinn Féin leadership shouldn’t meet with the American political system,” he said.

“They are not saying we shouldn’t meet with the British political system. The Brits are up to their neck in this.”

Mr Adams said he had in the past told the US administration that he did not agree with them on issues like Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

“So we don’t agree with US foreign policy, and neither should we. What is important for us in the USA is Irish America. That is what is important. It is clearly important to get the administration there to take up the positive positions it has taken in our peace process,” he said.

“Say we decided ‘we’re not going’ and Mary Lou is not going to travel to Washington… well then what do we do?”

He said that “serious people involved in struggle, particularly people who are involved in national liberation struggles, understand that your own struggle whether it be internationalist has to be your primary focus”.

He added: “So they will expect you to raise their issues and we should. They would expect you to stand with them, and so we should.

“But they would not expect us to do anything – any more than we would expect them to do anything – which would set back our own struggle.

“So I think it’s Irish-America’s day, it may be dominated by what’s happening in Washington, It’s those people who stayed with our struggle for centuries… and we should touch base with them and we shouldn’t lose them because they are the ones who have kept the presidents in line in terms of Good Friday Agreement, peace process and all the rest.”

Ms McDonald said her view is that the Palestinian question is at a “diabolical tipping point” and welcomed the provisional findings of the International Court of Justice in the Hague which ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide from taking place last Friday.

The party event was largely focused on Mr Adams’s long career, the Good Friday Agreement and what he described as the “transformation” from participation in an armed conflict to the peace process.

“While Sinn Féin was a very good, very decent, very hardworking organisation it was basically the second cousin of the army and it was armed actions which set the pace,” he told attendees.

Their conversation was warm and frequently light-hearted with Ms McDonald saying she was always struck by Mr Adams’s relationship with residents of the north inner city in Dublin.

“There is nobody happier than Gerry Adams when a Dub lifts Sam Maguire,” she joked.

Mr Adams recalled how when he was a TD he used his bike to get to Leinster House and that on one occasion when he was cycling in, a school bus followed him shouting: “Uh-ah, up the ‘Ra” – a remark which drew laughter and applause from the audience.

He said that Leinster House was “not a good system” criticising the “tweedle-dum-tweedle-dee, nodding dogs” in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Ms McDonald told Mr Adams he made it look “fairly effortless” when he entered Leinster House for the first time in 2011.

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