'A very tough year': Mary Lou McDonald on her husband's cancer diagnosis

Ms McDonald had herself recovered from a hysterectomy in early June 2023 and the family trip came not long after. She told Ireland AM host Muireann O'Connell that she had a "very tough and eventful year".

"I've had a very eventful and a very tough year or so. And sometimes that just happens in life, right? You get, you know, one thing happens and then another thing happens," she said.

Ms McDonald said her husband had become unwell and needed to be rushed to hospital in Biarritz.

We went on a short family break and literally between packing the case to come home and arriving at the airport, Martin got really, really sick.

"I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was serious, because he's the type of man who, Irish man who, you know, wouldn't matter what it was [he would say] 'Sure I'm grand, everything's grand'.

"But he wasn't ok and, long story short, we had to get him to a hospital, the closest of which was in Biarritz," she said.

Saved his life

"There was actually a lovely woman who came to our assistance in the airport. I never got her name, but she was a nurse. She was an Irish woman, but she was travelling, I think, to London, and she came and agreed with me that this was not good. He couldn't get on the flight, so he went to the hospital.

They saved his life. His bowel had burst, so he went through very serious surgery, and in the course of that, they found a tumour, and he got a cancer diagnosis.

The Sinn Féin leader said it was "one of those moments in life where literally everything got turned upside down" and that she worried about getting her husband home, though his prognosis is now positive. She said Mr Lanigan is currently in hospital, but that her family is "walking to the light at the end of the tunnel" and that they were "lucky".

Ms McDonald also talked about the death of her father just a few weeks ago, saying that the pair had had a "complicated" relationship. 

Mr McDonald died "peacefully in the wonderful care of Caritas Nursing Home on Merrion Road" on July 29, according to his death notice.

"We buried my father five weeks ago. So anybody who has lost their dad knows that's a very hard thing. It's a complete game-changer.

I love my dad, but we had a complicated relationship. He was a complicated person. 

"My parents had been separated for most of my life, so it's a kind of a strange thing. You lose your father, so you have the grief of that, but it's not a straightforward grief, if that makes sense to you.

"As a family, we're dealing with that. And the great thing is, though, that you come at these things together with your family, with your friends, and it's a great thing about Irish people that you don't ever have these experiences on your own. You always have people to lean on. And I've leaned on my people during that."

Ms McDonald was also asked about the charging of a man in relation to a death threat made against her on social media, which she said "crossed a line".

However, she said that she never considered stepping down as leader of Sinn Féin due to her personal issues.