Summary: <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/Michael_O_Regan" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Michael O’Regan</a> is journalist and former parliamentary correspondent of The Irish Times. He says he doesn’t have a book for me to plug, ‘yet’. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> I managed to grab an interview with Sinn Féin’s<br> Aengus Ó Snodaigh at the election count in the RDS. To put this in context, Aengus<br> Ó Snodaigh got one of the highest votes of any politician in the country, and<br> at the moment I spoke to him those votes were being counted and tallied – it<br> might have been quicker to weigh them – so of course I started with<br> congratulating with on his vote.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> But I really wanted to ask him about a<br> topic that I think is very relevant given the possibility that was emerging<br> then of Sinn Féin going into government.<br> <br> <br> <br> The Cash for Ash scandal in Northern<br> Ireland, whereby some people in the know, often DUP supporters, made huge<br> amounts of money claiming subsidies for renewable heating that were vastly<br> higher than what they actually spent on the heating bills. <br> <br> <br> <br> To Sinn Féin’s credit, it’s clear that<br> their politicians did not have their sticky hands in the till on this, unlike<br> some others. But the enquiry into this revealed a series of emails that Sinn<br> Féin clearly would rather have remained secret, and it’s clear that the emails<br> were written in the belief that they would never come to light.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="M%C3%A1irt%C3%ADn%20%C3%93%20Muilleoir" data-wpel-link="internal">Máirtín Ó Muilleoir</a> was the Sinn Féin finance minister in the Northern Irish executive from 2016 to 2017 when the executive collapsed. Ó Muilleoir wrote an email to <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/the-real-teddy-bear-in-adamss-closet-isnt-cuddly-34315787.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Ted Howell</a>. Howell is a secretive figure who largely disappeared in the early 1970s, probably to work for the IRA outside Ireland, and re-emerged on the Árd Chomhairle of Sinn Féin during the peace process.<br> <br> <br> <br> No serious commentator<br> doubts that Howell was the closest of confidants to Gerry Adams, and a senior<br> member of the provisional IRA. <br> <br> <br> <br> And <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/row-over-mystery-sf-power-broker-o-muilleoir-went-cap-in-hand-to-37452179.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">the email that Sinn Féin finance<br> minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir sent</a> to Howell asked whether he, Howell, was content if the writer, Ó<br> Muilleoir, would make particular decisions in his capacity as minister.<br> <br> <br> <br> That’s dodgy as hell.<br> It’s also extra-constitutional. Ministers, north or south, have a particular<br> duty in law, and that is to make executive decisions. They are not supposed to<br> be the vassal for other people’s decisions.<br> <br> <br> <br> Whatever about actions<br> in the past, any minister elected now has a duty to be the bona fide person who<br> is answerable to the electorate for what they do, not answerable to an entity,<br> any entity, that meets in private.<br> <br> That’s the context for some of the questions<br> that I ask Aengus<br> Ó Snodaigh here.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br>
