Sinn Féin for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell publicly accused three of the Sinn Féin leadership, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris (TD for Kerry North) of being on the seven-man IRA Army Council; they later denied this. On 27 February 2005, a demonstration against the murder of Robert McCartney on 30 January 2005 was held in east Belfast. Alex Maskey, a former Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, was told by relatives of McCartney to "hand over the 12" IRA members involved. The McCartney family, although formerly Sinn Féin voters themselves, urged witnesses to the crime to contact
Sinn Féin Bank founding council comprised George W. Russell, Arthur Griffith, and P. T. Daly. In 1910 it purchased headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street for £575, leasing the upper floors to the Sinn Féin party, from where the "Sinn Féin" newspaper was edited. A contemporary wrote, "we do not envy the man who has the job of persuading [nationalists] that the new Sinn Fein bank (which we take it will be established without complying with the requirements of British law) is a secure nest for his savings as the Bank of Ireland". When the First Dáil proclaimed an Irish Republic in 1919, it