gains in West Belfast, minus three councillors who had defected to Republican Sinn Féin in 1986), the party lost 15 seats. In the aftermath of the election, Mitchell McLaughlin admitted that recent IRA activity had affected the Sinn Féin vote. In the 1989 European election, Danny Morrison again failed to win a seat, polling at 48,914 votes (9%). The nadir for SF in this period came in 1992, with Gerry Adams losing his Belfast West seat to the SDLP, and the SF vote falling in the other constituencies that they had contested relative to 1987. In the 1997 UK general election, Adams regained Belfast West. Martin McGuinness also won a seat in Mid Ulster. In the Irish general election the same year the party won its first seat since 1957, with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin gaining a seat in the Cavan–Monaghan constituency. In the Irish local elections of 1999 the party increased its number of councillors from 7 to 23. The party overtook its nationalist rival, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, as the largest nationalist party in the local elections and UK general election of 2001, winning four Westminster seats to the SDLP's three. The party continues to subscribe, however, to an abstentionist policy towards the Westminster British parliament, on account of opposing that parliament's jurisdiction in Northern Ireland, as well as its oath to the King. Sinn Féin increased its share of the nationalist vote in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 Assembly elections, with Martin McGuinness, former Minister for Education, taking the post of deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland power-sharing Executive Committee. The party has three ministers in the Executive. In the 2010 general election, the party retained its five seats, and for the first time topped the poll at a Westminster election in Northern Ireland, winning 25.5% of the vote. All Sinn Féin MPs increased their share of the vote and with the exception of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, increased their majorities. In Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Unionist parties agreed a joint candidate, this resulted in the closest contest of the election, with Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew holding her seat by 4 votes after 3 recounts and an election petition challenging the result. Sinn Féin lost some ground in the 2016 Assembly election, dropping one seat to finish with 28, ten behind the DUP. In the snap election eight months later caused by the resignation