Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald has said she was "profoundly shocked" when she found out about a former councillor's involvement in gangland crime.
Jonathon Dowdall was elected to Dublin City Council as a Sinn Fein councillor in 2014. He left the party and the Council soon after.
Last month, Mr Dowdall was sentenced to four years in prison for facilitating the murder of David Byrne in the Regency Hotel in 2016. He has since turned state witness in the Regency murder trial.
Read more: Hundreds of Twitter jobs in Dublin could be lost as employees lose office access
The former councillor was also convicted of interrogating, threatening, and waterboarding a man in January 2015. Ms McDonald told reporters at Sinn Fein's ard fheis that Dowdall "wouldn't have been anywhere near Sinn Fein" had they known of his criminal involvement.
She said: "Had we known that he was involved in any form of criminality, and I have to say I was profoundly shocked, as were many, many others, to discover his criminal activity, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near Sinn Féin.
“He wouldn’t have been anywhere near me or anybody else. The courts now are dealing with this matter. Anybody involved in criminality, gangland, they [should] face the full rigour, the full rigour, throw the book at them is what I say.
She added: “I represent a constituency that has borne the brunt of criminality and gangland violence and thuggery and there can be no truck with it. No room for it and certainly, I am relieved, pleased to see that justice now, the wheels of justice in motion, we leave it to the courts to deal with all of that.”
Ms McDonald denied the party's association with Dowdall had been damaging to Sinn Fein's image. She said: “I think people realise and accept, I hope, that we had no notion nor had others of the fact that this individual was involved in criminology. None at all. None at all."
“This person, at one point, was a person of very good standing in the north inner city of Dublin so the shock was not just ours but more widely felt but let me just assure you, had we known, he would not have been anywhere near any of us or in the Sinn Fein party.”
Read next:
Inspectors of illegal Coolock dump's cars set on fire while visiting site
Young man stabbed in Dublin city centre apartment as woman arrested
Tent in Dublin back garden advertised on Airbnb for €35 a night
Council pay €400,000 to remove 'section' of illegal Coolock dump plaguing locals
Sign up to the Dublin Live Newsletter to get all the latest Dublin news straight to your inbox.
