Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today had high

hopes just a few short months ago of breaking the mould in Irish politics and leading a radical

left-leaning government. It didn't happen. Mary Lou MacDonald won plaudits for her leadership

of the Nationalist Party Sinn Féin, which did win most

votes in February's general election, but when the post-election horse trading began, Ireland's

two old-established parties closed ranks and formed a grand coalition to keep Sinn Féin out of power.

Was it because Sinn Féin, with its historic links to the IRA and the

armed struggle in Northern Ireland remains too toxic, too dangerous for a plurality of Irish citizens,

or was it because Mary Lou MacDonald made some grave strategic missteps? Whatever it was,

Sinn Féin remains committed to taking power in Dublin and ultimately

achieving the early political unification of the island of Ireland. Is the opportunity still there?

Well, Mary Lou MacDonald joins me now from Dublin. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you.

After the February election, when you and your

party did remarkably well, you won the most first preference votes in Ireland's general election.

You talked about a revolution at the ballot box. Well, five months on, what's happened to that revolution?

Well, five months on, we are into really uncharted and unprecedented times, no more than

yourselves, with a global pandemic with the public health emergency here on our island.

And, of course, that has caused very considerable disruption to people's daily lives, but also

to political life. But I'm happy to report that

all of that disruption notwithstanding, the appetite for political change remains very strong right

across Ireland, north and south. And I still hold firm in the view that we are living through

changing and changed times, times where I believe that significant movement in Ireland, progressive

...