Padge: ‘Still as busy as ever’
Former councillor Padge Reck talks to David Tucker about his continuing and unpaid work, and how the new crop of councillors should pay more heed to local affairs instead of global problems
PADGE Reck, the veteran former county and borough councillor who received the biggest severance package in County Wexford after stepping down from local government following 36 years of service, says it was never about the money.
The 70-year-old retired councillor, who bowed out ahead of this year’s local elections received €54,000 after tax, the largest payment to any of the retiring menbers.
‘ There are begrudgers out there, the world is full of them, but I was never a money grabber. It was never about the money,’ said Mr. Reck.
‘ There’s such a hue and cry about the amount of money, but I was a councillor for 36 years, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year
‘I talked to people who were suicidal and three, four and five o’clock in the morning; when there was flooding in the town I was sometimes up at two in the morning. I was always there, always available.
‘I was doing local government business all the time when I should have been taking my children to the circus and things klike that,’ he said.
The former councillor Reck is critical of some of the current members, who he feels are out of touch with the people they should be serving.
‘People have become embroiled in issues that have nothing to do with what a councillors’ job is about - you need to deal with calls from people about their rent, and their medical cards, not what’s happening in Syria or Gaza. That’s a job for the national government.
‘A Wexford councillor’s work is about what’s happening in Wexford, and the same applies to any councillor in any town in the county,’ he said.
‘It’s about the welfare of your own people. The people who elected you is the most important thing and members should not lose sight of that.’
‘I started off in local government in 1979 and my total income was £5.40 a month. It was £1 to make a phone call to Dublin, which meant I was paying a phone bill of £60 every two months. That came out of my own pocket.
‘In 1998 my total income as a county and borough councillor was £40 a month. Helen Corish and Gus Byrne were in the same boat. We were all town-based councillors who weren’t getting travel allowances, however, there were people who were getting a whole lot more,’ Mr. Reck told this newspaper.
Asked why he went into local government in the first place, he said he became a councillor because of his interest in the welfare of the people of the town.
‘One day I was delivering furniture to a woman, with two children, living in one room. There was a bed, a washing machine, a cooker, a cot all in one room. That was the catalyst that started off my interest in people. I was 24 at the time,’ said Mr. Reck who worked at various times with Joyces, O’Briens in Selskar and Staffords on the Quay.
‘Fianna Fáil denied me a nomination and I stood on my own in 1979, but befiore that I did many things for people that the public would not be aware of .
‘I wanted to help people . Working in the shop, one of the saddest aspects was loneliness which was rampant.
‘Life was about meeting people and older people would come in and talk because they were lonely and they had no one else to talk to.’
He said that he is currently doing more constuency work than he did four years ago as a councillor.
‘I have always done it and will continue to do so...my door is open. I am available.’
Mr. Reck said his unofficial and unpaid duties include Labour Court hearings, reconciliation and mediation.
‘I refuse nobody and am still available 24 hours a day. I refuse nobody and if somebody asks me if I can do something for them, I will.
‘I don’t ask people to pay me and if I can deal with their problems, I will,’ he said.
During the interview he breaks off to take a call from someone asking him for advice on a Labour Court issue
‘That’s the fifth one this morning.. it appears the public will always need somebody to give them reassurance and advice. It’s in my blood.’
Mr. Reck said his career in local government had not been without personal cost to his health and his family life.
At one stage he sat on 37 committees, so it’s perhaps not surprising that he suffered a heart attack because of overwork.
‘I dealt with that and never said sorry to anyone that I can’t deal with your problem. I did it because it was and is my life.’
Commenting on criticism from some quarters of the size of the severanve packages the retiring members received, Mr. Reck said he wanted to remind people that huge retirement packages were being awarded to retiring executives of charities with far fewer years of service.
‘I went through times when I had no money at all. I used to smoke and drink and sometimes I went a couple of weeks without them because I had no money,’ he said.
‘The first time I was mayor it cost me £1,100 of my own money. I was once hosted a recepttion for 28 people and had to buy a round of drinks out my own pocket.’
Mr. Reck said that when Don Curtin became Town Clerk he made changes to the the mayorality was funded and the costs that individuals had borne until that time, were paid by the borough council.
‘It levelled the playing field and retained the dignity of the office, irrespective of how wealthy or poor the mayor was.’
Amongst his successes, Mr. Reck lists the establishment of the Wexford Campus of Carlow IT.
‘It’s a great measure of my success that I brought a third level college to Wexford. That was some achievment for an ordinary councillor.’
Does he miss the cut and thrust of local politics, the wearing of the robes?
‘I feel like a fish of water now. I’m not a councillor any more, but I don’t want to be a couch potato. There’s nothing that a TD can do, that a councillor can do, that Padge Reck can’t do.’