A YEAR IN THE DAIL – IMELDA MUNSTER
IT IS NOW JUST OVER A YEAR SINCE LAST FEBRUARY’S GENERAL ELECTION IN WHICH LOUTH AND EAST MEATH ELECTED TWO NEW TDS. THIS WEEK IMELDA MUNSTER TD DISCUSSES THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS WITH JOHN MULLIGAN.
HAVING the patience of a saint is not a trait that immediately springs to mind when you think of Imelda Munster, the TD.
In her private life she may well be blessed with such a quality, but that is a personal, private matter of no one else’s concern. In her public life since first becoming a councillor, patience is not a quality that first springs to mind when her name is mentioned. Just ask Louth County Council officials who she regularly clashed with in the council chamber over the years.
She wants things done, wants change and is frustrated by the lack of pace in the small changes that she has seen in her time in politics.
Having spent over an hour and a half in her company you sense that impatience of wanting to get on.
It is not really that she wants to change the world: changing Ireland, changing Louth and her hometown of Drogheda would do her.
Throughout a wide ranging interview following her first year in Dáil Eireann, that impatience comes to the surface, time and time again whether it is about the parliamentary protocols and procedures, the lack of action on the council’s land bank in Drogheda which could help with the housing crisis or the frustration of being in opposition and not getting actions on your agenda.
‘Although it is a year today since the first sitting of the Dáil it is actually only ten months that we are there as it took weeks and weeks to form a government. The time has flown by. It took a couple of months to get used to the different ways things are done’, she says.
‘ The one thing I found very different from my time on Louth County Council was that there, if you were pursuing a particular topic you didn’t have to wait to be allocated speaking time. Initially I found that very frustrating, but once you get your head around the system, you see where you can get your opportunity to speak’.
Since then Imelda Munster has been appointed Sinn Fein’s spokesperson on transport, tourism and sport and she admits that she was surprised to get any brief. ‘I feel very privileged that the party entrusted me with what is a very wide brief, but I am Louth and East Meath first and foremost, it was the people of Drogheda and Louth who put there.
‘I made my mind up when I was given the brief that my allegiance first and foremost was to the people that voted for me, so you suss out ways to do things. In terms of topical issues, I have for the last number of weeks sought to raise the issue of the land banks and it might not be selected as a topical issue, but me being me I would go to the Ceann Comhairle and say that this is fourth or fifth time that I have sought to raise this issue and that it is an issue of concern for my constituents. If you stay quiet you get nowhere, so you have to bull in’.
Just over a year ago when elected she made history in being the first female TD elected in Louth, a fact that she is very proud of.
‘Firstly it was a huge honour to be elected in the first place but to break through that barrier and be the first woman elected in Louth was phenomenal. I think women felt that there was a chance here to get a woman elected and make history, but also shows women that it is possible that if you work hard, are true to yourself, you don’t have to be anything special, that there are no barriers there.
‘When Sinn Fein asked me first to stand for the council in 2003 I was a reluctant candidate, I said no; no, it is not for me, I will do whatever on the ground, canvassing etc, but it is not for me.
‘When you are thrown in the deep end and say right, I am here now and I am not going to let anyone down.
‘You see it locally, people who might have worked all their life to get there and never get the opportunity and I think it is more prevalent in males to be more personally ambitious, but I was never personally ambitious in my life, so when I did agree to take up the challenge. I did it to have a Sinn Fein representative in the south of the county, but I knew the good work that we have been doing locally over the years and I knew that people had a good sense of that work and that person had a good respect for me, that I didn’t always go by protocol in the council that if there was an issue that I felt was important I would be like a dog with a bone about it even if I didn’t make headway on it, it wouldn’t be for the lack of standing up and fighting about it.
‘It was a big ask to get the two, but we were coming a strong base in 2011 and the Local Elections and it would have been a mistake not to look for a second seat’.
Of course the other Sinn Fein TD in the county is the party president, Gerry Adams who was first elected in 2011 and is one of the most familiar faces across Ireland and in many parts of the world so, surely it is difficult being in the shadow of such a political heavyweight who takes centre stage whenever and wherever he goes?
‘It is a honour to have the party president in the constituency and his face is known the world over, not alone Ireland. There is the X-Factor with Gerry when people meet him on the street and that has never been a problem for me. I just try to be myself, I don’t think that will change and I am quite confident in my own skin, it is genuinely never ever been an issue for me.
‘I would always come back to the fact that you don’t get elected overnight, it is hard, hard work. If you go back to 2002 we had no Sinn Fein elected representative in Drogheda and through our hard work and reputation for work that changed that situation. Trying to change local government and make it more accountable’.
A big bone of contention for her during her time in Louth County Council was the way in which Drogheda has been let down with the removal of the borough status for the town and not having a Director of Services for Drogheda. Now in Leinster House she is still fighting that
I DIDN’T ALWAYS GO BY PROTOCOL IN THE COUNCIL THAT IF THERE WAS AN ISSUE THAT I FELT WAS IMPORTANT I WOULD BE LIKE A DOG WITH A BONE ABOUT IT
issue and says ‘I raised with the Minister in the Dáil and I was shocked and had to see it for myself in black and white that Louth County council hadn’t seen sought funding for a Director of Services.
‘We have missed out of having that go to person we have lost our Town Clerk and who are you supposed to go if you don’t have that go to person? Drogheda is one of the largest provincial towns in Ireland and it should have that go to person, whether it is for the Chamber of Commerce, housing or for a voluntary group’.
She hears similar echoes of frustration across Leinster House and hopes that the changes can be made under the National Planning Framework which is presently going through public consultation and to which Sinn Fein have made a submission.
As we are talking the Anti-Austerity Alliance are holding a press conference to announce that they are changing the name of their party to Solidarity, so does this mean signal that the good times are back and that austerity is behind us?
‘No I don’t think that austerity is over, not by a long shot and I will give you the reasons. You have our housing crisis, our homeless crisis, our healthcare crisis and you still have water charges looming and while it is not absolutely signed and sealed yet it is looking a lot more hopeful. You still have a level of unfairness in service provision, we have a long way to go.
‘I have already brought up the land banks in Drogheda several times since being elected. Those land banks were purchased for housing, but they are sitting as wasteland at the minute.
‘ The land is now there eleven years and we are paying £3 million a year on an interest only basis and that £3 million would disappear if we started to build on the land. It is coming out of Louth Council’s budget at a time when they are strapped for cash. ‘Fair enough we went through a time when there was no money, but you have to ask when is a crisis not a crisis, if the government are determined to solve the crisis the land is there. They used to say that we have no land. They have the land. If they are anyway sincere they would start building houses on the 53 acres of land here in Louth at least it would be a start.
‘ There are over 20 acres in the Drogheda area alone and that would provide up to 400 houses’.
‘Government want private developers to go out and solve the problem, build houses and the developers will then give the houses on 10 or 20 year leases. But that house will never be the tenants, after the lease they could be asked to move out. With a local authority house they have security of tenure.
‘ The other disadvantage of present policy is that local authority have no housing stock. Say if a person in an OPD (Old Persons Dwelling) dies. The house is already adapted for use with ramps, etc, etc, it can then be given to another person, rather than having to pay the cost of adapting another home.
‘Government are rolling out money for councils to go out and buy houses, but that will only put pressure on prices for others trying to buy, it is not a long term solution’.
As spokesperson for transport a lot of her time recently has been taken up with issues at Bus Eireann, the threat to bus services and pending industrial action by trade unions representing drivers.
‘Our public bus network should not be about profit, it is about providing connectivity between urban and rural and that boasts the economy and provides a social boost to our society.
‘ The management had targeted the workforce, what they were doing was attacking their hard won rights and conditions, and what worker wouldn’t fight for their rights?
‘ The willy nilly handing out of licences to private operators to run routes has caused the problem, knowing full well that they would be competing with the public operator.
‘ The private operator was allowed to cherry pick the routes, They went from A to B to make a profit and didn’t stop off at certain points along the way. The NTA would have known that this was going to have an adverse effect on the public network. When they say that they only issued five licences in the last five years, those five licences equated to 104 services. They went on with this policy knowing that it was going to cause a financial crisis in Bus Eireann’.
The Sinn Fein transport spokesperson, claims that one of the lowest subventions in Europe for public transport and a rebate of just 41% on free travel passengers have both added to the present difficulties and adds ‘it is reckoned €10 million, minimal money in the scheme of things would solve the problems, but it would have to be done in conjunction with reviewing the routes and we are not talking about removing the private operators, no-one is against competition. It is glaringly obvious in some places that they have over saturated the routes and where previously Bus Eireann was making a profit on a route it is no longer doing so.
The lack of cohesion in decision-making in government and statutory bodies frustrates her and as we discuss the problems in An Post, the great big white elephant of eircode, An Post’s postal code system comes up, ‘I have never gotten a letter in my front door at home or in my constituency office which uses the eircode. That’s another big spend and no one was ever tasked with ensuring that it was never implemented or held to account’.
Moving onto health she says ‘ there is massive issue with accountability within the HSE and that is known right across the state, in relation to putting in questions in the HSE, you have try and pinpoint, the exact, precise question in the hope that you get the exact, precise answer and you get the answer and you read the first couple of lines and start to think hold on they are actually going to answer the question I’ve asked and by the time you have read the entire response you say where is my answer. So you have to go back to the drawing board and try and find the answer.
‘It is endemic right across the entire HSE, but why is it endemic? It is because no government or no minister has ever tackled them. The minister knows full well that the HSE doesn’t give a direct answer to a direct question but they are being allowed to get away with it’.
Brexit however dominates the political agenda and she says ‘It is a massive, massive issue and it is going to have a profound effect for decades to come if it comes to fruition, firstly no one wants to go back to the detested hard border, no one wants that.
‘It will be detrimental to all of Ireland but to border counties particularly.
‘If ever there was a time for really strong leadership on this we need the government to play hard on this. We need the government to be over in Europe as much as possible and to insist that we need a special designated status for the north within Europe.
‘I always have the fear that when the Taoiseach goes over there that he is a pleaser, you never get the sense: ‘ oh here is this pain in the arse that is going to fight his cause’.
‘ The orchestrators of Brexit clearly didn’t expect to win, I remember the faces of the leaders of the Leave campaign the following morning and they have been hiding ever since. The Prime Minister has dug her heels in blindly, so it is up to us and the Europeans.
‘ Theresa May is thinking about England, she is not thinking of the six counties for a second and if the unionists think any different they are delusional. She is thinking England and primarily London, nothing else, no one else matters, so the Unionists need to be a little wiser in thinking about this’.
The routine of a TD’s life is now part of her daily routine and she opened her office full time to deal with the representations as well holding clinics in east Meath every second Monday.
‘It is full on to be honest. I love being busy and always have during my time as a councillor, dealing with the issues, it is full on, long hours, I am not crying about it is what it is, but without Niall’s support at home it would be extremely difficult’ says Imelda who is mother of two daughters, aged 22 and 18.
‘I am always nervous before I speak, I always have butterflies before I am going to speak, even now going onto the radio, my stomach would be heaving, I mean somersaults and then you just have to go, right be yourself, if you make a hames of it, you make a hames of it but at least you are doing it. With time you get more used to it, but I like the fact that I still get those nerves, it means you are not arrogant, that you don’t give a hoot about what you are speaking about’.
Given that what are her recollection of her first time speaking in the Dáil? ‘It was the first day of the new Dáil sitting. I had to speak, I had to second Gerry’s nomination for Taoiseach and I remember the Ceann Comhairle thanking me and stating that that was Imelda Munster’s maiden speech and I said to myself that if you think that was my maiden speech you have another think coming’.
Imelda Munster a TD who is impatient to get on with it.