 Good afternoon everybody. My name is Barry Colfer and I'm the Director of Research here at the IIEA. A very warm welcome to all of you here at our premises in Central Dublin and to those joining online. We're really happy to be joined today by Ifa Moore, an award-winning journalist and author who's been generous enough to take the time to be with us at what is a very busy time. Ifa, as ever, is going to speak to us for about 20 minutes and then this will be followed by the all important questions and answers with you here. My headquarters and those of you online, as ever, those of you who are here, you might raise your hands. Those online, please use the questions and answers function on Zoom. A reminder, the meeting today is on the record. I'll now formally introduce Ifa and then hand things over to her. Ifa Moore is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Long Game inside Sinn Fein. Ifa is a former political correspondent for the Sunday Times and the Irish Examiner, and she spent two years working as a journalist for Press Association. In 2020, as we'll all remember, Ifa broke the gulf gate story on the Erachtis Gulf Society scandal along with her colleague Paul Hosford, for which they were jointly awarded Journalist of the Year at the 2021 News Brands Irish Journalism Awards. Congratulations both. A daring native, Ifa has written and commented extensively on Northern Ireland, Irish and Northern Irish politics, the legacy of the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreements, as well as the unique challenges faced by women in Irish journalism and more widely in Irish society. Ifa has recently launched a new podcast of trolls about life online and her own experience of online abuse and Ifa was just telling me that that's been rolled out in some primary schools, which is really cool and really interesting. I'm also delighted to announce that, as some of you know already, Ifa is going to be taken over the important role of BBC Dublin correspondent starting this Monday, so huge, huge congratulations to Ifa for that. But indeed the warmest of welcome and the next 20 minutes is yours. Thanks Ifa. Thanks. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think I do better with questions rather than formal speeches, so I'll just do this. I'll keep this short so then we can go into questions. But for those who don't know me or anything about me, my name is Ifa Murr. I'm from Dairy City. I am from a family directly impacted by the Troubles or the conflict in Northern Ireland, so my uncle Patrick was the same age as I am now, and he was shot in the back by Soldier F and killed on Bloody Sunday. He was a civil rights activist, and he had sex children when he was killed. Our family became one of the founding families of the Bloody Sunday Justice campaign, which took 39 years for the British government to admit that it was unjustified and unjustifiable and that experience. My uncle Patty died 19 years before I was born, but the experience of growing up around the campaign, the protests, the press conferences, and also this unbuilt questioning of everything the authority is telling me. I don't really think I could have done any other job when I grew up. I think that it was a great grinding for, there is such, especially in Dairy City, an innate feeling of right and wrong, and that fight for justice, and that really was what inspired me to become a journalist. And I think naturally, Northerners, I have to say this without saying colourful language, but Northerners have a great radar for saying it like it is. In politics, we are really missing that a lot of the time. People are very duplicitous, they can be very false, and it really excludes people from vulnerable communities because the language that we use is so unapproachable. And when I moved to the Republic, I was taken aback because I had never lived in the Republic. I went from Dairy to Glasgow and then came here. And I came to the Republic with this very naive view that I had no family connections to any political party, my family aren't political. And the first person in my family to go to university, I didn't feel like I was due any abuse, and I was taken aback at the sheer level of vitriol that was directed towards me because I was from the north. Not only that I was from the north, but I was from the north, I was Khalifa, I was from Dairy, and my uncle was murdered by the British Army. So that was what most people took from that, is that she supports Shemfane. There's no other way forward, she must support Shemfane because look at her background. And what I kept finding as I spoke to more people, and I am not saying people in the street, I am talking about the people who walk the halls and lens their house, the ignorance about people in the north, the ignorance about the troubles. And what I find really disappointing is that the Irish government, whoever is in power, will always hold up the Good Friday Agreement as the best thing that this island has ever done because it is. But the lack of education about your cousins in the north really offends me and it makes for a very poisonous divisive political debate. We have had, you know, elected politicians calling out for, you know, people's bodies to be found to have been buried 10 years before. We had a column and a major newspaper last week where they blamed the IRA for a bomb that was done by ISIS. There is a serious lack of education. And the reason that I felt this book was so necessary now was because on both sides, whether people vote for Shemfane or they don't like Shemfane, there is so much ignorance about where Shemfane came from and who they are. And my other concern would be the more popular that Shemfane became. It's the victor who gets to write the history. And I did not feel there was a good contemporary modern book about how Shemfane are and how they are run. I knew when I was going under this that I was going to have my work cut out, but I did very much feel like I was the best person, best place to write the book. Because as I often said, when I took the job with the Sunday Times, I think I might be the only person who worked for Robert Murdoch who had to walk past two IRA monuments to get to school. So I grew up in a very Republican estate in Derry, and I had known people who were in prison for IRA crimes my entire life. That's not very strange for where I'm from. I have a group of about 10 best friends here. I all went to school with in the old garage school and every single one of us as a family member who was in the IRA. That's where we come from. So I felt that I had the base knowledge in the context and the contacts to write this book and do it well. For those who haven't read the book or what the book. The first person I told about the book was Marilyn McDonald. She seemed pleased. She seemed happy for me. We had a good working relationship. I believe she said no better woman, which I agree. And she said she would tell Pearson Michelle and I asked her about a cooperation. What happened then and in the time since and the way I've come to describe it is unhelpful at best obstructive or worse. And then Fane wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. Within weeks of sending repeated emails. They sent me out. I got an email from their solicitor. Telled me that they wanted to see parts of the book. And they wanted it to see extracts of the book about allegations that were made against staff and members and whoever else. So naturally, being the dairy woman that I am, I didn't reply and printed the email out and it's now in the second page of the book. And I'm not going to lie. This was not an easy process. I took it very personally. There was a lot of tears. My character was questioned repeatedly by people I thought I knew and had good work in relationships with. I was given a very insulting nickname by a staff member in Sinn Féin who called me the poison snake. The book that I have written I have to say now it is absolutely not perfect. I don't think any book certain about Irish politics is but it is. I do not think anyone else could have written this book just to the nature of I wouldn't be stopped and I already knew too many people and I think that's why Sinn Féin were so paranoid. The book touches on everything from it comes from the hunger strike up until repeal the eighth and now like we saw yesterday, the most popular party on this island. And I really wanted to chart how that happened and who the base are and what comes next. And I think really what comes next for Sinn Féin is going to be the most interesting thing because I've also said that I feel like Sinn Féin are walking a tightrope. There is the Sinn Féin who have the hunger strike commemorations and we need to remember that the hunger strike is so important to Republicans that's where the Sinn Féin that we know now that's where they come from. That's the election of Bobby Sands that's everything for them. What happens then, if Mary Lou McDonald becomes the Taoiseach, you know, some of the people who died on hunger strike committed horrific crimes. Can the Taoiseach of Ireland still go to hunger strike commemorations and we are already seeing some questions about whether Mary Lou McDonald would do that. She hasn't given a definitive answer, but that in itself is a message that there might be a change, there might have to be a change. So for me, I don't really make a point in the book whether I think that the greatest party in the world or the worst party in the world that's not for me. It's not for a journal as a political correspondent to make, but I try to lay out everything. And the big thing for me was victims, because the thing that bothers me a lot about politics in the Republic is the Fina Fall and Fina Gale mostly politicians consistently talk about IRA victims, but they're not actually talking about victims. They are only talking about IRA victims when it comes to slagging off Sinn Féin. So in each chapter or if I'm describing each attack, I'll pick one victim in the book and give that person a personality and a whole life and a profile. My Uncle Patty was murdered and I knew exactly what he looked like. We had frame pictures of him all over our house. There's a mural point painted in the bogside with his face on it. I didn't know anything about him. I didn't know he was a great singer. I didn't know he was a big drinker. I didn't know he was a really good fighting, that sort of stuff. So I went out of my way because I'm very sick of people talking about the victims of the troubles, but not talking about the victims of the troubles. So each person or each in each chapter, there is a person that I pick out. So it can be, you know, a census worker or a young woman who was shot in the head out doing the census. It could be an Asian woman whose husband was left so disabled and injured by a bomb in Canary Wharf that she killed herself in her fifties. It could be the voices and the stories that are forgotten. And I think we would all do well to stop using victims of the troubles in general, no matter who took their lives to be used as fodder to get one up on their political opponents. So in saying that, the reaction to the book has been overwhelmingly, I would say, good. I mean, not from with Ansham's vein, but the reviews have been great and I'm very happy. I knew I wasn't going to please everyone with this book. I think I don't think I can, because you picture a more divisive topic in Ireland at the moment than a possible Shinfane government. But I think I did the best I could and I am proud of the book. And I think what happens now and even with the amount of people here and the way people watching is there is a real interest in this night people Shinfane are likely going to be in government north and south. And the next big question is how do they manage that they have not ever been in charge of a government, like they would be in the Republic, you know, it's not something I would say but storm and has been referred to as a glorified council, that set a council so it's also a government where you're there in government with their sworn enemies and the people and like the SLP and alliance. So, they will, I am certain have to go into coalition. And I know my whole Martin doesn't like to hear it, but I think it was painful. And I think they have made so many promises now as a modern party that they will struggle to keep by the very nature of how Ireland is set up with FDI and everything else. But I think the most interesting thing for me and the real marker of who Shinfane are is what we were going to see in common. If they get into government, how do they react to the Republican base, how do they react to their history. You know, we saw Michelle and he let the Queens funeral. I wasn't surprised by that but a lot of people were. But I think if you watch how Shinfane have carried themselves since Martin McGinnis met the Queen, there are all these extensions of all of branches there are all this outreach. But it is all masking a much darker shadow of how the party still operates and how there are so a lot of things that happened under the eyes of people within Shinfane or previously were in Shinfane that haven't been acquainted for. So, that to me is the much more interesting question and how republicanism stands side by side with this new progressive left wing party that they claim to be. I think, and I use this as an example but Bobby stories funeral is the best example I can give of that so in the Republic when Bobby stories funeral happened and there was all those pictures and every front page in the middle of COVID. With the leaders of Shinfane at the funeral and people in the public kept saying to me, why would they do that like that is so silly they've just walked into this huge controversy for no real reason surely they would know. And then when I interviewed people for the book. I was told yeah we did know we knew that was going to happen, but we could not risk losing the base in West Belfast because we didn't go to Bobby stories you know. So these are the things that they are going to have to get a handle on because it's going to come up consistently and it is not something you can take a stand on when you're teaching. And I do really believe that Mary Lou Madonna is going to be the Taoiseach. And so that's all I have to say about the book now and I'm happy now to go to questions.