a special Ard Fheis in Dublin. Michelle O'Neill was also elected as vice president of the party. Sinn Féin were opposed to Northern Ireland leaving the European Union together with the rest of the United Kingdom, with Martin McGuinness suggesting a referendum on the reunification of Ireland immediately after the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum results were announced, a stance later reiterated by McDonald as a way of resolving the border issues raised by Brexit. Sinn Féin's first elections under McDonald resulted in the party performing well under its own expectations during the 2018 Irish presidential election that October, and similarly, the party's performance was labelled "disastrous" during the concurrent May 2019 European Parliament election in Ireland and 2019 Irish local elections. In the European elections, Sinn Féin lost 2 MEPs and dropped their vote share by 7.8%, while in the local elections the party lost 78 (almost half) of their local councillors and dropped their vote share by 5.7%. McDonald stated "It was a really bad day out for us. But sometimes that happens in politics, and it’s a test for you. I mean it’s a test for me personally, obviously, as the leader". However, in the 2020 Irish general election Sinn Féin received the greatest number of first preference votes nationally, making it the best result for any incarnation of Sinn Féin since the 1922 election; Nonetheless, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party formed a coalition government in June 2020. Although second on seats won at the election, Sinn Féin became the largest party in the Dáil when Marc MacSharry resigned from Fianna Fáil in September 2021, which, with Seán Ó Fearghaíl sitting as Ceann Comhairle, left Sinn Féin the largest party by one seat. Sinn Féin lost their numerical advantage in February 2022 following the resignation of Violet-Anne Wynne. In November 2020 the national chairman of Sinn Féin Declan Kearney contacted several dissident republican political parties such as Saoradh, Republican Network for Unity and the Irish Republican Socialist Party about creating a united republican campaign to call for a referendum on Irish unification. This information did not become publicly known until 2022 and the move was criticised in some quarters on the basis that it would be wrong for Sinn Féin to work with dissident republican groups which do not repudiate violence by paramilitaries. Sinn Féin retorted that engaging with dissident republicans draws