Ireland's Sinn Fein demands place in government at Dublin rally

Irish left-wing nationalists Sinn Fein demanded a place in Ireland's next government on Feb. 25 at a packed rally in Dublin, saying the country's two dominant centre-right parties were trying block voters' demand for change.

Sinn Fein shocked the Irish political establishment in an election earlier this month by securing more votes than any other party for the first time, almost doubling its vote to 24.5 percent on a vow to fix the country's housing and health systems.

But it has been frozen out of government talks by centre-right rivals, Fianna Fail and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar's Fine Gael, who have both refused to contemplate sharing power due to policy differences and Sinn Fein's history as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

The two parties, who have alternated in power for 100 years, on Feb. 25 held talks about possibly sharing power for the first time.

"They are doing everything they can to keep people who voted for us out of government," Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald told a packed hall of 500 people, with a couple of hundred more waiting in freezing wind outside. "Sinn Fein wants to be in government and we want to deliver."

"To the parties that have decided they do not want to speak to us, I say this: We respect your mandate. Now it is time that you respect ours," she said.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said Sinn Fein does not operate to the same democratic standards held to by every other party and that McDonald had praised units of the IRA.

McDonald, who took over from Gerry Adams in 2018 and has no direct link to the IRA's role in the three decades of violence in Northern Ireland that ended in 1998, rejected the statement and said Martin was "exuding bile."

Varadkar has...