Mythen is a Wexford history maker
SINN Fein General Election candidate, Johnny Mythen, made history at the weekend by topping the poll having received a phenomenal 18,717 first preference votes and becoming the first Sinn Fein TD in Wexford since the foundation of the state.
Such was the level of his success that he exceeded the quota by 6,204 votes.
His rise back into the political fold after losing his County Council seat in the last local election has been meteoric.
Mythen was confident going into the election that winning a seat was a possibility but the level of his success even took him by surprise.
Speaking to this newspaper about his whirlwind victory he said he was overwhelmed by the support he received.
‘I don’t know how I feel about it to be honest, it’s all a bit surreal,’ he said.
‘It’s the first time in 102 years,’ he added. ‘That makes it very special for me because all those Sinn Fein people came before us and now it’s finally happened.’
The historic nature of the election being held on a Saturday for the first time in 102 years was also something Deputy Mythen was acutely aware of.
‘To come back on the day the 1918 elections were held, on a Saturday as well, 102 years ago, you just feel there is some sort of connection there,’ he said.
The manner with which Mr Mythen stormed to victory, ironically, brings about its own pressure.
Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael said they would not go into Government with Sinn Fein, however, when this was put to Mr Mythen he said they will have no option but to open discussions with his party.
‘I think the game has changed completely and maybe [before] they could afford not to speak to us but now they are going to have to [talk to us] because we are looking like we might become the second biggest party in Ireland,’ he said.
‘I mean, if you can’t talk to the people who are in the second biggest party in Ireland who can you talk to?’ he added.
‘They will have to look at the realistic vote that came out of this now. They will have to seriously now sit down and talk to everybody.’
Now that he is going into Dáil Éireann the dynamics for Mr Mythen have changed, however, he said the focus of his attention in terms of priorities remain as they were.
Housing remains one of his biggest concerns: ‘I think nationally, and in county Wexford as well, it’s housing that is one of the key issues. Because we are not supplying enough houses, and young people can’t afford enough houses,where are they going to go?’
‘We know where they’re going; they’re 30-years-of-age and they are going back to their parents and living in a small room upstairs, I mean, what sort of life is that?’ he added.
He said the housing crisis is affecting people’s ability to enter into relationships because they don’t have a place of their own to call home.
‘We are getting a whole sector of people divided into a culture that I would say is not family orientated and what that creates as well is a type of selfish view and that’s not a good thing,’ he said.
‘If you are in your 30s, 40s or 50s it’s very difficult, if you are in a routine, to settle down but when they’re not affording you the opportunity to do it that’s where the problem happens and I think that’s criminal really.’
Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have been very critical of Sinn Fein’s housing policies and have claimed the party doesn’t have a financial plan in place to back up what it says it will do in terms of solving the housing crisis.
However, when Mr Mythen said his party’s proposals were all costed.
‘Well, look they are all fully costed by the Department of Revenue and by the Department of Finance and I’m sure Pearse Doherty has a fairly keen eye at looking over his figures because he has caught out the Government many times on their figures,’ he said.
He said the situations like the children’s hospital debacle are hard to fathom and the time has come for something to be done.
‘It’s hard to get your head around the children’s hospital which started off at €1bn and it’s gone to nearly €3bn now so where did that money come from?’ he asked.
‘I grew up in a council house and I often think if you were born now where do you go?’
‘We have over 2,300 people on the housing list in Wexford,’ he said.
‘However, we also have to understand there are people on HAP as well and they are waiting on a knock on the door and if we see that the market is buoyancy up, you can be damn sure that a lot of the landlords will be looking at selling their property off and it’s really about evictions, that’s what we’re talking about,’ he added.
‘That’s what’s happening, even though people are on HAP and are getting Government assistance they’re still homeless because they haven’t got a home; it’s not their home and like a person said to me ‘Johnny, I can’t drive a nail in the wall without asking permission from the land lord’, because it’s not their home.’
Mr Mythen also said there is a ‘another tsunami coming down the line’ in terms of people in mortgage distress.
‘There are over a thousand people in mortgage distress in county Wexford and when they go, where do they go?,’ he said.
‘That’s going to be a real problem down the line because they will have no homes; their homes are gone,’ he added.
‘People have got to start thinking about what is happening in real life.’
In terms of what it means to have recorded such a monumental victory in the election in Wexford, Mr Mythen said he was ‘very humbled’ by the support he received from the electorate.
‘I am very privileged to represent the people of Wexford and as I said to you before they are a very resilient people and I am proud to represent them.’