I am not a landlord. We hunted them out a long time ago. I own property
Michael Healy-Rae on immigration, assisted dying and... Sinn Féin
MICHAEL Healy-Rae is on the move non-stop, always talking, even taking calls while he’s on the treadmill. And the phone rings endlessly.
The Kerry TD, 57, of the Healy-Rae political dynasty, was surrounded by angry protesters outside the Dáil last year, before the Dublin riots, and now gets calls in the small hours of the night from those who want to harass and abuse him, he says.
He rarely misses a call, and if he does, he will always call the person back.
The phone rings eight times during his interview with the Irish Daily Mail.
He hands his mobile to his intern, Abby Caballero – a young politics student from San Diego, California – asking her to take a message, but quickly adds: ‘If Radio Kerry calls, I want to talk to them.’
Ms Caballero got a rude introduction to Irish politics when she, along with her new boss, was harassed outside Leinster House on that fateful first day of term in September.
‘They’d be way better off to go and go working and not mind hanging nooses outside the Dáil and threatening people,’ Healy-Rae says.
‘I wouldn’t let anything stop me in the way of my work.’
He was also subject to a verbal death threat in 2018.
‘A person thought it was a good idea to pull up alongside me and tell me they’d put a bullet in my head and they finished up inside the Central Criminal Court.’
When asked if those incidents have shaken him, he replies: ‘Arra yeah, but usually people who say those types of things are only bullies.
‘When you face them down afterwards they’re not as big and smart as what they might think.’
As we sit down to talk, Rip.ie is open on his phone.
Is it his most visited website? ‘I hear city TDs saying that rural TDs are running to funerals. What a stupid statement, just because they are not friends with people.
‘I would like to think I know an awful lot of people in Kerry. I’ve never in my life been at a funeral where I didn’t know the people. I go out of respect for the people that I know, and they like to see you there at a time of need.’
When asked why he has a sod of turf in his office, he says that in his family turf was a ‘terrible important thing because at one stage it was all we had to make a few pound’.
He said his father would cut and sell it as a young boy, with the sod perched in front of a photo of the late TD.
‘If you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you’re going.’
Jackie, the blueprint for the Healy-Rae political clan, died in 2014 aged 83, having served 14 years in the Dáil for the people of Kerry.
Michael has been elected to the Dáil in three successive elections – 2011, 2016 and 2020 – while brother Danny followed in 2016, and again in 2020.
Other Healy-Rae family members at county council level, are waiting in the wings to take their path to Kildare Street.
As he marked the ninth year since the death of his father, Michael says his experience with death did not make him more open-minded on the issue of assisted dying.
As chair of the Assisted Dying Committee, he says it is ‘as controversial as abortion’ and has reaffirmed his pro-life stance.
The special Oireachtas committee was established to make a recommendation on whether Ireland should legislate for assisted dying and is coming to the end of its hearings.
It is due to make a recommendation on the controversial matter to the Government in March.
In Ireland it is illegal to assist with someone’s death, including helping them to travel to another country where they can avail of euthanasia. Assiting someone can result in sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
The committee is unlikely to unanimously agree a single way forward given the strong views of the different politicians on the panel, but it will give the Government the required food for thought in drafting any legislation – or, indeed, in deciding it should be left alone.
Michael lost his father, his mother Julie, and two of his lifelong friends within 18 months of each other.
However, he says he respects other people’s choice in wanting to have the option for assisted dying.
‘I couldn’t ever explain how much I believe that we should always try and get on to the next day.’
He said a mantra from his mother is something he lives by... ‘everything passes’.
‘Life is short, even if you go from 0 to 100, that’s the span all going well, sure isn’t it an awful short length of time? So why would you want to cut it shorter?’
He has remained staunchly pro-life on the subject even when confronted by friends
‘They’re not as big and smart as they might think’
and family. He says: ‘I believe that from the moment that a child is conceived, I believe that from then until the day you die, I believe we have a boss, and I believe that’s God.
‘It’s not men with suits or women with dresses [who] should be interfering in that, either stopping the new baby being born, or the person getting older, taking them out of the world.’
He says if assisted dying is allowed in Ireland in certain circumstances, ‘where do we stop?’
He is rather more tight-lipped when it comes to his finances, in the face of much publicity about his wide-ranging and lucrative business interests.
Figures published last October by the Department of Integration show that a Co. Kerry guesthouse operated by a firm – owned by Deputy Michael Healy-Rae – received €544,090 for accommodating Ukrainians to the end of June last year.
His entry to the Dáil Register of Members’ interests lists his other occupations as postmaster, farmer, service station owner and owner of rental properties. He also has shares in the New York Times.
Last September Kerry County Council refused planning permission to Healy Rae’s Roughty Properties Ltd’s application for a three-storey extension to expand guest capacity at Rosemount Guest House.
Adding more to his plate is his job as chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying – which adds a €10,438 top up to his TD’s basic salary of €108,987.
Speaking to the Mail, he would not say how many rooms he is using across his property portfolio to house Ukrainians, but said he was accommodating people from Ukraine along with other renters, people on HAP and students.
While he has been critical of the Government on the issue of migration – while taking in refugees himself – he denies this amounts to talking out of both sides of his mouth: ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not a contradiction.’
He also hits back at those who criticise him for being a landlord and encourages them to try it. ‘Maybe if some of them got off their arses and if they had some of the torture and torment that I have, trying to do what I do... they wouldn’t be able to do it because their head wouldn’t stick it.
‘I am not a landlord. We shot all those people a long time ago and they were hunted out of Ireland and their houses were burnt. I own property.
‘I have a head that’s able to go away and borrow money because I don’t have money. I’m able to borrow money, buy property and work a system.’
He also believes he and the Rural Independent Group of TDs deserve some credit for the Government decision to dramatically reduce the welfare offering to Ukrainian refugees after the Rural Independents’ focus on immigration in the Dáil.
He expects immigration will be a dominant issue for voters ahead of the next election. ‘I’d like to think we played a very significant role in that change. Because the Government isn’t stupid, they listen to things that the Rural Independent Group are talking about, because they know that we are listening to people on the ground.’
He says that the Government’s processing of international protection applications is too slow, and they are not actually enforcing enough deportations.
On heated discussions during Dáil debates, he says: ‘It takes a lot sometimes to hold back,’ but does not accept that Dáil decorum has diminished in recent years.
The Rural Independent Grouping – which includes Michael and his brother Danny – brought a motion on immigration for debate before Christmas, where tempers flared between TDs, with threats from the Ceann Comhairle to suspend the house several times during the discussion. He stands by his statement during that Dáil debate that Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin was a ‘horrible little man’, after Mr Ó Ríordáin said the immigration motion was ‘lowest common denominator politics from a lowest common denominator political grouping’.
‘He was looking down his nose at us. Now, if he wants to debate with me, debate with me like a man, but don’t be like a big shot looking down at me and saying, I’m a lowest denominator goddammit. I’d say I got a few votes more than he did.
‘People try and insinuate that I’m a racist because I asked questions about our migration policy and things like that. It’s a bit like Father Ted, like: “I hear you’re a racist now father.”’
He says this is a ‘nonsensical argument,’ and is adamant that he is not ‘criticising migration. I’m questioning a policy’.
When asked if he would come off the Opposition benches and enter the Government as an Independent or with the Rural Independent Group, he sidesteps the question saying: ‘The first thing that has to happen is I have to get in.
‘If I’ll be here of course, I’d be a player in some shape or fashion, but am I going to be here? That’s up to the people of Kerry.’
However, he says that the rise in support for Sinn Féin in recent years has more to do with the Coalition’s reputation than the quality of the opposition’s offering.
‘The support for Sinn Féin in the polls is not that Sinn Féin is so good, it’s that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Greens and Labour are so bad. I’m 100% sure of it.’
It’s a bit like Fr Ted: ‘I hear you’re a racist now Father.’
‘Don’t be like a big shot looking down on me like I’m a lowest denominator goddammit!’