Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald addressed the party's general election candidates launch in the Round Room of the Mansion House.

The Dublin Central TD spoke about the need to give families and workers a break, and urged people to vote for a future that delivers for workers, families and communities.

McDonald said: "Exactly 100 years ago in January 1920 Irish Republicans were celebrating the victory of Sinn Féin in local elections across Ireland. Those candidates of 1920 were pledged, as we are pledged in 2020, to implement the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil Éireann."

That Programme, added McDonald, "affirmed the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland. It established a Republican Government based on the principles of Liberty, Equality and Justice for all."
 
Sinn Féin in 2020, said McDonald "is about finishing the work started here 101 years ago. The Ireland envisaged by those who sat in the first Dáil Éireann is not the Ireland we have today. This state, on this partitioned island, was not built on the principles of the Democratic Programme first presented in this house. Is it any wonder then that the two parties who dominated this state for decades could not utter the words ‘Sinn Féin’ when they commemorated the First Dáil last year?"