Mary Lou McDonald says there is 'every chance' she would have joined the IRA

Mary Lou McDonald said there is “every chance” she would have taken part in the IRA’s armed campaign against the British.

The Sinn Fein leader also defended the Provisional’s campaign of violence which claimed the lives of thousands of people during the Troubles.

Ms McDonald also accused the both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael of stealing Sinn Fein’s policies to falsely claim they are parties for chance when they set to deliver more of the same.

But was her admission that she would have took up arms herself and her defence of the IRA’s campaign as “justified” which will be most controversial.

“I wish it hadn’t happened, but it was a justified campaign”, she told the Sunday Independent.

When asked if she would have joined the IRA she said: “Yeah, I think there’d be every chance, every possibility.”

She also revealed that Prince Charles wrote to her after she contracted Covid-19 to wish her a speedy recovery.

She added: “[He] wrote to me in the aftermath [of Covid-19] to wish me well, which I thought was nice... So, if you want a measure of how much things have changed, there’s one, I suppose, small example.”

She also said she intends to lead her party into the next decade and hopes to be in government in the coming months.

“I have my eye on the next decade as a huge decade of opportunity”, she said.

The Sinn Fein leader said that if Fianna Fail and Fine Gael try to copy her party’s manifesto it amounts to “plagiarism and theft” adding that the offer nothing new.

Sinn Fein Leader Mary Lou McDonald with newly elected TDs from her party on their way to Leinster House, Dublin. (Brian Lawless/PA Wire)

She added: “I would call it, same old, same old. Old-fashioned opportunism. It’s not just a case of producing the framework for change and striking the right rhetorical pose. You actually have to go then and be true to these principle and deliver these things.

“What I hear they saying about housing, for example, and the Land Development Agency. I mean that has the potential to become Nama Mark II. It’s opaque, there’s no FOIs (Freedom of Information requests) allowed. It’ll become O’Devaney Gardens writ large, where public lands are used to build minimal public housing and build houses ordinary working people simply won’t be able to afford.

“I see the same old, same old written all over their approach to government thus far.”