HALT THAT WEDDING!
HSE assessed the mental health of 82-year-old Matt who married his best friend Michael for tax reasons – after two objections were lodged
A LAST-ditch attempt to halt Ireland’s first heterosexual same-sex marriage was thwarted this week when one of the grooms proved his mental capacity to HSE officials.
The HSE – which runs the State’s registry of births, deaths and marriages – was acting on two written complaints questioning the mental faculties of 82-year-old Matt Murphy who wished to marry his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, and leave him his house without landing him with a tax bill of almost €100,000. Mr Murphy, who has a visual
AT the age of 82, Matt Murphy is enjoying near-celebrity status as one half of Ireland’s most celebrated and talked about new unions.
Flamboyant, theatrical and a dashingly dapper dresser, Matt was soaking up the limelight in his locality this week, where he was already one of its most loved citizens near his home in Stoneybatter, on Dublin’s northside.
‘I’ll be back again tomorrow to sign autographs,’ the distinguished gentleman jokes to customers in Lilliput store, as they pose for the cameras.
Now the subject of a forthcoming documentary by award-winning filmmaker and photographer Donal Moloney, interest in them extends beyond the story of a civil union by two heterosexual males for tax avoidance purposes.
Generous beyond measure, Matt who was formerly robbed of nearly €10,000 by a friend, wanted to leave his home (which is worth some €300,000) to Michael O’Sullivan, 58, for caring for him as he is halfblind – but he did not want to also leave him a tax bill of up to €100,000.
As they prepared to make history as Ireland’s first publicised heterosexual civil union, Matt and Michael invited the Irish Mail on Sunday into their home – which they believe to be haunted – this week to reveal the story of their lives.
A chronic hoarder, Matt’s arrival into the world in Cashel, Tipperary, in 1935 was treated as a ‘scandal’ as Catholic Ireland reigned. Brought up by his grandmother, believing that his biological mother was his older sister, his father’s identity was always kept secret.
His mother vowed that she’d take that secret with her to the grave – and she did, leaving him to speculate all those years since.
Romance eluded him, he said, and he never married.
That is, until Friday last, in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital Registry Office on Dublin’s Canal Street, when he married his best friend and closest confidante of nearly 30 years, Michael.
Discussing his years as a bachelor, Matt said: ‘I think because as I arrived into the world as an illegitimate child, as we were called in those days, I always just wanted to help other people.’
He never truly thought of himself, but instead, felt a desire to escape from himself. He places on the table photos of himself dressed as a woman for a number of fancy dress parties decades ago.
‘I think I did it because I was selfconscious,’ he says, ‘and I wanted to be someone different for a while. When I dressed as a woman, I knew no one would recognise me. It was just a bit of fun. I’ve always loved clothes. I was always ahead of my time. I would have loved to have been a fashion designer.’
Matt is reluctant to show visitors his home: it aggravates him to allow others to see the possessions of ‘little value’ that have piled up in every room, and which spill out of every crevice. ‘It’s a disease and I feel for me that it’s incurable,’ he says of his impulse to hoard items. ‘To throw something out feels like tearing off part of my skin. I can’t do it. People who have little when they are young are inclined to buy and hoard. I’m ashamed, in a way, for people to see how I live. I feel part of me is exposed.’
His living circumstances have also tormented him in other ways.
While he’s a Protestant, h e’s prepared to invite a Catholic parish to bless the house, which he bought for £19,000 35 years ago, as both he and Michael are convinced that they can ‘sense spirits’ in the kitchen.
The reality of their situation – cemented with platonic love – has been obscured by the headline of marrying for tax avoidance purposes, they feel. Matt never did follow his dream of working in fashion, but worked as a butler and housekeeper, before working for Eircom for 17 years before his retirement.
There, he met Michael, an actor, and a divorced father of three.
‘Michael is the young brother I never had,’ he says.
Their paths became further entwined when Michael lost his home to a bank, and later had to move out of a flat he was renting as it was being sold. Then, he ended up sleeping in his car.
Matt offered his friend a place to stay, but cautioned that ‘it isn’t a palace.’ ‘I said to him, “It’s rough and ready. It’s not a grand old house, but you’re welcome to a roof over your head”.’
For Matt, the decision to leave the house, a two-bedroom artisan cottage, to Michael was made ‘pretty quickly’.
‘We’re like an old married couple already,’ Matt says, leaning his head in towards Michael’s, in the days before the union.
During the ceremony, the friends held hands, and instead of a traditional kiss on the lips, hugged each other in a warm embrace, after vowing to ‘love and comfort each other in sickness and in health.’
Matt sang, ‘Let the rest of the world go by’, while Michael regaled guests with a story about Matt, which brought tears to his eyes.
‘I remember the first time we went out, Matt gave a girl who was polishing the brass banisters a bar of chocolate to thank her for “doing a great job”. I’ve always said that the mark of a man is not how rich they are, but how they treat other people.
‘Matt is a master of that – of treating other people with a huge amount of dignity.’
Matt’s witness at the ceremony, his neighbour of nearly 20 years Deirdre O’Mara, said he is the ‘most pleasant, lovely, beautiful man I’ve ever met’.
‘I see the bond they have, and how Michael cares for Matt and I think it’s great,’ she says.
‘It’s a brilliant union. They suit
‘I see the bond they have and it’s great’ ‘We’ve redefined what marriage is’
each other so well,’ adds Frank Woods, a friend of Michael’s for 20 years and his witness on the day.
Marriage doesn’t always have to be about love, they say. It can also be about friendship, companionship, care, and economic necessity.
‘We’ve redefined what marriage is’ Michael believes. ‘We understand that gay people were discriminated against for years and fought hard for marriage equality.
‘But fortunately it actually gave equality for everyone to marry, not just gay people. It’s not necessarily about people falling in love. It’s going back to the old way of people marrying as a business contract.’
‘I do love Matt,’ says Michael. ‘I just think he’s wonderful. He’s fantastic company. You couldn’t help but love him.’
With Michael by his side, Matt doesn’t require a full-time carer, or have to live in a nursing home if his health further declines.
What does Matt enjoy most from their arrangement?
‘He [Michael] is someone I trust, and I trust him with my very life. You can’t buy that.’
‘We just sit and chat in the kitchen, I’ll smoke my cigarettes, and we can say anything to each other, because we trust one another.’
‘It’s not easy to find, especially today, someone who you can pour out your heart to and know they understand you completely.’