‘Sinn Féin traitors!’: how far-right rhetoric derailed party’s path to power in Ireland

Sinn Féin’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, was expected to become taoiseach at Leinster House. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan/Reuters

For Siobhán Fenton, the dream of Sinn Féin winning power and leading a progressive leftwing government evaporated the day she was canvassing in Dublin and felt a cold, sharp sting on her neck.

She was in the passageway of a block of flats in the inner city, knocking on doors, and looked around for the source. Fenton, a media adviser to the party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, felt another sting on her shoulder, then another on her forearm.