Geoghegan: I didn’t think I would ever be selected over Kate O’Connell – it’d be my first hurdle
In the short space since James Geoghegan was confirmed as Fine Gael’s fresh-faced candidate in the upcoming by-election, the focus has centred on his illustrious pedigree, his family’s membership of the judicial/political elite and the ranks of his venerable antecedents which, at a rough count, include several Supreme Court judges, a Chief Justice, an Attorney General, a Minister for Justice, a District Justice plus a few TDs.
Not a bad calling card for the denizens of Dublin Bay South, possibly the most affluent constituency in the country, spanning leafy Ballsbridge and upmarket Donnybrook, where James’s maternal grandparents, the late Chief Justice Thomas Finlay and his wife, lived most of their lives.
Indeed, there’s possibly more than a few old timers and social observers in the D4 area who could rattle off the affable 35year-old’s heritage a lot quicker than him.
For to his credit, James, a practising barrister, wears his distinguished lineage with ease. Nor is he exactly consumed with interest about the twists and turns of fortune that created the family dynasty. The son of two Supreme Court judges, Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan and Justice Hugh Geoghegan, both retired, James was close to his maternal grandfather, the late Thomas Finlay, growing up.
‘He died only a few years ago, I remember him as just a very kindly, gentle person. He was more interested in you than in anything he did with his life,’ he recalls.
Finlay was also a Fine Gael TD in the 1950s, following in the footsteps of his father, also called Thomas Finlay, who was a Cumann na nGaedheal politician in the 1930s before his untimely death from typhoid.
‘We talked about politics, about what was going on day- today but he was more interested in hearing about what you were up to than having heated political debates,’ says James, who possibly may share a similar mindset.
His father’s stock, the Geoghegans, were also rooted in Cumann na nGaedheal although James’s grandfather, his namesake, joined Fianna Fáil and sat at the Cabinet table with Eamon de Valera after the 1932 election.
‘He was helping tenant farmers with their land annuities and advising De Valera on the issue when they asked him to run for Fianna Fáil,’ explains James. ‘Growing up, I was always told that my grandfather was the only member of that Cabinet who didn’t own a gun as everyone else had fought in the Civil War or the War of Independence.’
Were there photographs in James’s family home in Cowper, Rathmines, of his non-military grandfather with de Valera? ‘No, but there might be some in the history books,’ he says.
But if family history wasn’t drummed into James and his two sisters – Sarah, a doctor and Karen, a lawyer – as they grew up, a social conscience certainly was.
Both branches of the family are involved in philanthropy and dedicated to the ethos of public service. ‘Obviously, it’s fine if you can only look after your own family, that’s all lots of people can do but when it came to my family, I was always conscious that we had more and that we had to give more back.
‘We had big discussions around the dinner table about it and I saw my parents throw themselves into voluntary work. My grandfather was heavily involved in the Cheshire Homes, while mum was chair of Temple Street hospital board and dad had a role with the Eye and Ear hospital.’
At school in Gonzaga, James was immersed in the Jesuit ethos of Men for Others, volunteering to work with the intellectually disabled and visiting patients in the Royal Hospital Donnybrook.
But nothing prepared him for the jolt he got as a newly minted councillor in 2019 meeting with the homeless.
‘I’m on the Special Committee for Homelessness and have at this stage met many service users. It’s very difficult for anyone to appreciate that every single night some of these people are looking for a hostel or a bed for the night, yet the person on the other end of the line is like someone you or I would deal with about our Sky TV package. They have no skillset for dealing with vulnerable people and are largely indifferent.
‘This is something we are trying to change – we have to ensure that the first point of contact for service users is people-centred and that compassion is the cornerstone of the service.’
As a councillor, James really enjoys representing the chain of neighbourhoods he grew up in, moving through his old stomping grounds with their familiar faces and making new
‘I was conscious we had to give more back’
acquaintances. ‘This is a well-off area but there is poverty here too,’ he says. ‘There are people on the margins relying on Vincent de Paul payments. I do my best to connect them with the social welfare and housing allocation systems. That’s the whole point of politics, isn’t it? To help people on the margins. That’s how I was brought up.’
A neatly dressed, dapper man, who is married since 2016 to Claire Cummins, also a barrister, with whom he has two small children, Hugh and Harry, James seems tailormade for Dublin Bay South with its abundance of professional households, many of them young and hectic like his.
‘Clare and I both worked very hard and got a deposit together for a house near Milltown,’ he says, refusing to add if they got any help from their folks. ‘Look, I don’t want to get into that, but I remember the day very well when we got the keys. I had been renting for 10 years, since I was 20, my first was a boxroom in a house in Ranelagh, so it was a big moment in my life.’
The couple work very hard in their legal careers; they have a one-year-old child and a threeyear-old to care for while also juggling their respective evening jobs – in Claire’s case lecturing in King’s Inns and Griffith College while James is a busy councillor for Pembroke in Dublin 4 and also keeps his hand in the lecturing game.
Their tricky work/life balance, held together thanks to a childminder as well as the unpaid services of obliging grandparents, chimes with many double-income career couples, as does James’s love of the outdoors. He swims in Seapoint and, as a keen cyclist, is eager to see more greenways around the suburbs.
James nailed his colours to the Fine Gael mast as a politics and sociology student in UCD. He threw himself into student politics, meeting Neale Richmond and Lucinda Creighton through his activism and becoming a part of the latter’s canvass team.
Two years ago, he won a stunning victory in the local elections on his first outing. He had only rejoined the party a few months earlier, invigorated by his spell on Leo Varadkar’s leadership campaign.
But with Eoghan Murphy firmly ensconced in Dublin Bay South and Kate O’Connell in the second seat,
‘Getting the keys was a big moment in my life’
It’s by no means certain that FG support will hold
he assumed his assault on national politics would take longer.
Murphy’s sudden departure created an opportunity which James calculated he would have to do battle for against Kate who lost her seat in the 2020 election,
‘I really thought my first hurdle to the Dáil would be winning the party nomination and that the second would be an election campaign,’ he says. Fate – or Leo Varadkar – spared him the first contest although the ruthless disposal of O’Connell will make problems for Leo should the party lose its grip on a stronghold.
Dublin Bay South may be a Fine Gael natural habitat, but given how voters see by-elections as opportunities to deliver a whipping to governing parties, it’s by no means certain that its support will hold. Perhaps the prosperous residents of Dublin Bay South, particularly those whose adult offspring are failing to get on the property ladder, will hold their noses in the ballot box and vote
Sinn Féin, particularly if the candidate is the mild-mannered Lynn Boylan, whose impeccably middle-class partner Eoin Ó Brion is a star performer on housing.
James understands the dual faces of the housing crisis and seems sincere about fixing it and the other problems that bedevil the country. Does this son of D4 think he’ll get the chance to prove himself? ‘Please God,’ he says. ‘I hope so.’