ARE Micheál Martin and some Dublin journalists joined at the hip? Certainly at times they appear  to be trotting in unison along the same well-trodden political path.

Micheál first. His speech at the Royal Irish Academy last week (stop sniggering, Virginia) was essentially a fairly detailed defence of his Shared Island project.  His theme was ‘History, Identity and Politics’ and he said we’d need to “take a broader perspective on whether and in what ways our views of history are evolving”.

Mmm. I love the way Micheál’s words flow.  But I confess that I  thought history was the facts of what happened in the past, not a form of evolution. With  evolution, over aeons, something might evolve from  a damp jellyfish on the shore line to a sweaty  Sammy hammering a Lambeg drum. History in contrast is about the facts of  our past, which stay facts no matter how skilfully we spin them.

Later in his speech, Micheál tells us how to handle tradition: “It is possible, indeed essential, to be able to combine a pride in your own tradition with rejecting the idea that you must keep alive the divisions and methods of the past.”

Again, top marks for the ringing language, Micheál. But suppose for the sake of argument a republican were to take pride in the Irish tricolour and/or the ten hunger-strikers. 

All part of republican history and tradition – but nothing short of terrorist provocation in the eyes of some unionist politicians. So should our hypothetical republican drop his pride in the tricolour and the hunger-strikers in order to avoid division?  

Last week also, Dublin journalists ran their collective eye over a man called Jonathan Dowdall, who some time ago was a Sinn Féin councillor. This next bit’s complicated, so listen carefully, Virginia...

Some twelve years ago, Dowdall donated €1,000 to Sinn Féin. In 2014 he became a Sinn Féin councillor, but resigned and left the party after a few months, claiming some party members had  bullied him.

Which is odd, since Dowdall’s history doesn’t suggest that he’s a delicate little flower. The gardaí found a January 2015 video of Dowdall along with his father threatening and then water-boarding a man. In 2017 both Dowdalls got lengthy sentences for kidnapping and assault. It then emerged that gardaí believed Jonathan Dowdall was involved in the Regency Hotel killing of David Byrne and charged him. Dowdall has since agreed to give state’s evidence.

Now, you might think that since Sinn Féin had ejected Dowdall in 2014, his waterboarding, threats and involvement in the Regency Park Hotel murder were matters between him and the gardaí. Uh-uh. The press found a way of tying in the Bobby Storey funeral, the IRA,  Dublin crime gangs, and – yes, Virginia – Mary Lou McDonald.

Some of the Dublin media appear to be on a mission to tie something big and heavy to Mary Lou’s electoral leg. Much has been made of the four percentage points that Sinn Féin slipped in a recent opinion poll, from 35 per cent to 31 per cent. Rather less noise has been made of the fact that Sinn Féin still maintains a 7 per cent lead over its nearest rival, Fine Gael.

On Friday evening as the Dowdall coverage continued unabated, Mary Lou McDonald appeared on RTÉ’s Late Late Show. 

To say that she left Ryan Tubridy floundering in her wake throughout the TV interview would be an understatement.  At interview’s end, the studio audience applauded with whoops and cheers reminiscent of 1994, when Gerry Adams ran rings round a hostile panel and Gay Byrne, and the studio echoed to the cheers and whoops of the audience.

We’re still around two years out from a general election in the south which, as things stand, could result in  Sinn Féin making history by becoming the lead party in government and Mary Lou making history by becoming the first woman to become Taoiseach.

Shouldn’t Micheál and the Dublin media be looking at the highway ahead rather than forever peering in the rear-view mirror?