‘POLITICS IS MY LIFE’
AT 63, LABOUR LEADER IS SHOWING NO SIGNS OF SLOWING DOWN AS HE TOURS THE COUNTRY TRYING TO BRING HIS PARTY OUT OF THE SHADOWS IN GE2020 AND TO CONTINUE HIS WINNING STREAK LOCALLY. INTERVIEW BY
‘Politics is my life.’
Brendan Howlin makes no bones about his passion for the political life and the bloodsport that is a General Election.
A man of routine he wakes to his radio alarm at 7 a.m., tuning in to Morning Ireland.
He does his Wexford constituency work on Monday mornings.
‘I am in the Dáil Tuesday to Thursday. I have a flat in Dublin for years.’
He keeps up to date with local news from his local newspaper and by listening to South East Radio.
Wearing an EU blue pin on his suit jacket lapel, the Labour leader says he is relishing the election in two weeks’ time.
Born and reared in William Street in Wexford, the son of John and Molly Howlin (a Dunbar from Ferns), he said: ‘Ted, Mary and Jackie were born on King Street and then the family moved to William Street where I was born.’
He attended school in The Faythe (a school he would later teach in), and then the CBS, before going on to study in St Pat’s College in Drumcondra.
Wexford was a much greyer place when Brendan was growing up, he says. ‘I remember the St Patrick’s Day parades and they were much more sombre events compared to the razzmatazz you would associate with them now. Our house backed onto the green in Maudlintown and we played rounders there with a rock for the wicket and a hurl for the bat. We spent hours up The Rocks, our adventure land. My father John had a Morris Minor - everybody piled in – you’d get jail now.
‘My father was a trade union official. I had a very happy, very good childhood in Wexford.’
The Howlin home was a hub for politics and the trade union movement. ‘This was before the collection of union dues by direct debit. Most workers were members of the Irish Transport Union. The Corish Memorial Hall was its headquarters on the main street and it was the headquarters of the Labour Party. My father used to collect the union dues on a Saturday night. People would call in and pay their dues and would often see Brendan Corish who had an office there at the time. It was intrinsically linked: the union and the party.’
Virtually every day a shop steward would call up to the Howlin house. ‘Tom Rowe would be over or Jim Hess. There was always talk of trade union affairs and what was happening in the town. My father was a very close adviser to Brendan Corish and was his eyes and ears on the ground when he was in national government –
COMMUTING IS NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY. PEOPLE ARE LEAVING EARLY AND GETTING BACK LATE AT NIGHT SO WE NEED A DIFFERENT MODEL
so I was always in a milieu environment where politics and local issues and what was needed was being discussed.
Brendan’s father was an elected member of Wexford Corporation for 17 years.
‘My mother was always very laid back. She was never quite sure how many were going to be fed either: that was part of the open house.’
Although not a sporty child, he was enthusiastic, and loved growing up in Wexford town.
‘I had very good friends who I maintain contact with. When I came back from Dublin I got a job in The Faythe teaching. At the time there weren’t many men in primary schools and men were sought. I applied for two jobs and I got both of them.’
He was the only male teacher, working alongside 21 female teachers. ‘I loved teaching. I was always enthusiastic and had ideas and tried to change things. It was certainly a different time. Teachers generally were treated with great respect and still are and every authority figure has diminished in recent decades and maybe that’s a good thing.’
He credits his introduction to political life with his active role in the anti nuclear campaign in Carnsore in the late 70s which ultimately saw a gathering of 40,000 people protesting about the proposed nuclear power plant. ‘A lot of people in Wexford thought “this is going to be jobs and the biggest investment we have ever seen” and I and a number of other young people in Wexford were interested in what was happening internationally with nuclear energy and then Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened and the consequences of a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station motivated us.’
The movement consumed him over the following years. ‘My first political activity was in an environmental lobby against nuclear power. It was an amazing thing to be a part of because we organised the first anti-nuclear rally in Carnsore in 1978. We had distinguished Germans like Petra Kelly coming over.
‘We picked a site in Carnsore and we expected maybe 1,000 or up to 3,000 people to come to the rally over that weekend in August and we got 40,000 people. I had talked to Tagoat Community Council about providing sandwiches for people for the day! I had dug latrines. We almost panicked but it was a magnificent show of solidarity.’
He recalls the music, the workshops, the two page spread in the Irish Times complete with aerial shot of the site.
‘We repeated it the following year and the issue was dropped by government.’
It became a national movement and as chairman of Nuclear Opposition Wexford (NOW) Howlin found himself becoming a person of interest to the Labour party.
He was asked in 1979 to run for the Corporation and was selected to run in absentia, but he decided to refuse the offer and continue with NOW.
‘Shortly thereafter I got involved in the party having putting anti nuclear resolutions down at the national conference.’
He looked up to Brendan Corish and when the party leader decided to step down after the first of the three elections in 1981, young Howlin came into the frame.
He had been co-opted onto the Corporation in 1979 following Brendan Corish’s election. Brendan’s brother Des ran in the second election but didn’t succeed and then Brendan was chosen to run in the third. He came within 300 votes of being elected in ‘82.
Dick Spring then nominated him to the Senate, from 1983 to 1987.
‘I was only a youngster, 26, when I was made a senator. I gave up the teaching that year and I became a national party spokesperson and found myself on television and then in ‘87 I was elected to the Dáil and in ‘89 I headed the poll for the first time. Health was the big issue at that stage.’
He became health spokesperson and in 1992 after the election he became minister for health, which he describes as the most difficult brief of all, after running an economy in the middle of a crisis.
‘The Fitzgerald Report wanted to centralise hospitals. Wexford, was always on the list and without political strength that could have happened.’
‘Politics was very consuming for me. It did impinge of me doing other things that I might have done but I loved it and I’ve been enormously privileged because I became a cabinet minister relatively young. I was able to make a difference and invest in Wexford hospital.
‘Not everybody in life gets a chance to make a demonstrable and concrete impact on your own community and over the years I have served ten years in cabinet in three departments: environment, health and expenditure.’
He rattles off the quayfront, replacing the new bridge, getting contracts signed on the hospital’s new A&E and maternity wards within 16 months of being named Expenditure minister in 2011 and the Enniscorthy and New Ross bypasses and new garda station and courthouse among his crowning achievements.
‘You could see physical things that could impact on. As minister of Public Expenditure, all of the things that were backlogged like a damn and wasn’t moving like the completion of the motorway (were progressed).’
He believes Wexford should be far closer to reaching its potential with the economy firing again.
‘Wexford is the biggest population base in the south east. Wexford needed the infrastructure: it has natural gas, a road system from the eastern seaboard down as far as Oilgate. Unfortunately I am out in government so it’s not completed so we’ll push for that. Taking the pressure off of New Ross is critical as the town is choked and people are avoiding the journey into Wexford at peak times from Cork and Waterford.’
He said: ‘In those five years (2011-2016) it certainly transformed the built environment of Wexford. You get great pride in sorting out individuals’ problems and that’s a daily issue