Richard Bruton

How I got my beach body

IN all my years in politics, I have never generated such a flurry of interest — and for activities which I do every week in my community. After 40 years doing the same thing, I never imagined it would make me an overnight sensation. My family may never let me live down some of the tweets — and it has bewildered my parliamentary colleagues.

I cannot pretend that I am cut from the mould of the Olympic athlete. I have never excelled in any sport but have been willing to try them all. Even in my footballing days I enjoyed training more than playing the matches. The chase was more enjoyable than the kill.

The message of the video was ‘look around and you can find great things to do in Ireland and especially here in Dublin Bay North’. I have been a long-time patron of the facilities on my doorstep: the square mile of park for running in Saint Anne’s Park in Raheny, the coastal cycleway to Howth and now linking Baldoyle to Portmarnock, and the Bull Wall shelters in Dollymount for swimming. I could have thrown in the five golf courses and numerous GAA clubs that once boasted 14 of the 15 players on the Dublin team.

I hope people are encouraged by

Fine Gael’s staycation campaign to visit Dublin’s northside to see all it has to offer if they plan to holiday in Ireland.

Fitness is relatively easy if you build it into your routine and stick with it. However, you have to stick with it. If you are waiting for the weather to be fine, or the water to be warm, or the wind to die down, the chance will be gone and you will never get around to it. I often annoy my wife by always seeing the clear skies ahead when the sky starts to darken.

Of course, politics itself has kept me fit. Indeed the biggest thing I miss during the Covid restrictions is the chance to call to the doorstep of constituents. Listening to their concerns keeps me rooted in practical problems like the dished footpath for a mother with a buggy or the day-to-day stresses families are balancing.

I love to hear the perspectives on politics of the man leaning against his front gate. Over my career I reckon

I’ve called on 1.5 million homes and dropped five million leaflets. I could earn a master’s qualification in the dropping technique and, like the ancient Fianna, do it without crushing a leaf! This is a fitness regime in itself even if it would not make it into a standard Couch to 5K event.

I am lucky that I don’t have to think about diet. As anyone who follows my Instagram account will know, cooking is one of my favourite hobbies but none of it is sweet. A run of 15 visits to the dentist in my teens rid me of any desire for processed sugar. The combination of home-baked bread, jams and fresh local fish cooked to Thai, Moroccan or Italian recipes are my favourites.

I will have to confess that I don’t fully appreciate the underlying dynamic of social media. Nothing in all my years in politics took off like this video did yet took less effort on my part. The great thing about social media (especially Instagram) is that it can show that you are not just the ‘grey suit’ in which most politicians are cast, trying to survive hostile interviews in an overheated and overlit studio. It allows the real person step out, dare I say, in the flesh.

There is another side of social media that is a real challenge for people like myself who believe in evidence-informed political choices. The capacity for the irrelevant, the frivolous and the downright untrue to take off is legendary. The truth, like the regulators, arrives breathless and late. This rollercoaster feature is not just a problem for politicians, who you may say are fair game.

It is also a real presence in the life of younger people in particular as the trail of their lives is relentlessly exposed to scrutiny or even ridicule. We need to find a way to strike a balance.

Hopefully my staycation video will encourage more to holiday at home. I have no doubt that anyone who does come to visit the area who hasn’t been before will be taken by everything it has to offer and hopefully will be persuaded to become regular visitors.

The other important aspect of the video is to highlight the importance of supporting local businesses, which are struggling. If people holiday in Ireland this year I hope they will also choose to shop local wherever they visit.

Tourism in Dublin is, compared to our west coast, undervalued by Irish people but a short break in Dublin can be a great family experience. It really is the jewel in the crown of the east coast.

‘Nothing in my years in politics took off like this’