Ministers Heather Humphreys and Jack Chambers have called on Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald to give back a €1,000 donation that she received from convicted criminal Jonathan Dowdall.
Ms Humphreys also hit back at comments made by Ms McDonald at the weekend suggesting that gangland murders in Dublin and crimes carried out by the IRA during The Troubles could not be compared.
Dowdall was sentenced to four years in jail for his part in the Regency Hotel shooting in 2016 in October.
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Dowdall (44) admitted that he assisted a criminal gang to commit the murder of David Byrne.
He previously served as a Sinn Féin councillor and made a €1,000 donation to Ms McDonald’s Dublin Central constituency in 2011.
During an interview on Newstalk’s On The Record with Gavan Reilly last Sunday, Ms McDonald said that Dowdall would not have been allowed into the party if she had been aware of his links to crime.
It was put to her that one of her party’s TDs served time in prison for explosives charges.
“I think if we’re going to talk about things that happened in the course of the conflict, that’s one thing. That’s one discussion,” she said.
“I have to say as somebody who represents North Inner City of Dublin and who has seen and sees at first hand the damage, the corrosive damage, that so-called gangland has caused to communities, there is absolutely no comparison.”
Minister Humphreys said she was “very concerned” about the comments as they suggested there were “different degrees of murder”.
“[Ms McDonald] was sort of saying that an IRA murder is something different to a gangland murder in Dublin,” she said.
“That concerns me seriously because I have lived in the border region all my life.
“When you talk to Brid Quinn, her son [Paul] was a victim of an IRA murder. He was beaten to a pulp where his mother couldn't even put the rosary beads in his hand.
“It was an IRA murder. You ask her does she feel any different than a family that's been impacted by a gangland murder in Dublin.
“Ask the wife of the late garda Jerry McCabe how does she feel about that.
“That was a terrible thing to say and a lot of people have been hurt by it.”
Government Chief Whip Jack Chambers also condemned the Sinn Féin leader’s comments, as he accused her of attempting to “sanitise their past”.
The Fianna Fáil TD said: “On one level, they say they wouldn't have accepted Cllr Dowdall into the party but then they create some sort of new complex around what the degree of murder should be.
“We know the murder and the mayhem caused by many people in their movement. [Some] are very traumatised by the comments of Mary Lou McDonald in the last few days.”
Both Ministers Humphreys and Chambers said that Ms McDonald should give back the €1,000 donation the party received from Dowdall.
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