BROTHERS IN ARMS Joe Ring, pictured with his brother Michael, at the homecoming on Thursday.
Neill O'Neill
The tale of his humble beginings needs to be told. That is according to Michael Ring’s younger brother Joe, who says that the story of his elder siblings rise through Irish politics is deserving of a book and a film in itself.
Michael is four years older than Joe, the third eldest in a family of 13 of the late Margaret and Seamie Ring of Fr Angelus Park in Westport. Michael’s appointment last week as the Minister for Community and Rural Affairs in Leo Varadkar’s Government was a proud moment for all the family. Joe Ring feels that Michael could well be the last Government minister from the area in his lifetime, as the local population is so small.
“People don’t realise the extent of this, but there is a book and a film in it, and I mean that sincerely,” he told The Mayo News.
“You go back to 1979 when Jackie Gibbons and them haunted Michael to go into politics. He had no great political inclination that I can remember. This was a lad that had intelligence but left education at a young age. He hated school, every day he came home he threw his bag in the corner, he had no interest, and left school very early, he didn’t know where his bag was half the time. To rise from that to that is a powerful story and the point is that all the way through his life he had drive and determination, anything he did he was 100 percent at, he had something that many others do not.”
Delivery
Michael’s former job as a bread man ‘delivering dough’ is an often played on pun since Fine Gael entered Government in 2011 and he began delivering a different type of ‘dough’ in his native Mayo. However, Joe feels that each stage in Michael’s life has played an important role in forming a government minister over the decades.
“He sold bread, and it wasn’t always an easy sell, believe you me, and yet he could go to all the shops and get rid of what he had. He had a determination, the vans were broken down, there wasn’t petrol in them half the time and yet he did it, he was only a young lad when he started that, but he had determination, that put him on the right path. We got nothing for nothing coming out of Angelus Park with a family of 13. I was counting and in our little square of the estate there were almost 100 children in just a handful of houses. We would be out at midnight playing football, if we had a football, and that breeds something into you, survival I suppose.
“It did us no harm, but to rise above that in a time when people got nowhere unless they were educated and in the know, is remarkable. Michael learnt in the university of life. When he went to the Dáil first he would be late in Leinster House, often in the Dáil Bar, not drinking, but educating himself as to who the personalities were, what the issues were, because back in them days it was in there that fellas would talk freely and call a spade a spade. It was daunting for a young fella like him, from where he came from, going in there, but he had a determination to learn and an instinct to survive. You have to be proud of that.”
David V Goliath
Michael Ring’s vote getting is the stuff of legends in Mayo, but success and popularity has not come easily and not without many years of hard work, according to his brother.
It started off really in 1979 when he was pushed into the urban council and he has been at the top ever since. He has topped polls in the council elections and after Fine Gael were unsuccessful in several general elections it was decided it was time for a new approach and Michael said ‘I’d have a go at it’ in 1992. We weren’t far off that time, and we knew that we were onto something.
“Padraig Flynn was very strong them times, and Westport alone is too small in terms of population to get anyone elected so Michael’s biggest achievement of all was to win the seat [in 1994] of a sitting EU Commissioner, an outgoing minister, who had spent millions around the county, to beat his daughter in her own back garden where she had a bigger population base, that was some achievement. To go in there as an ordinary man, with no formal education, it was a phenomenal achievement.
“He knew to retain that seat, he had to work, work and work and he did that all over Mayo, but probably in west Mayo and Belmullet in particular. It was from there he went on, and while the Ring machine started off very small, it has become a big machine now. Michael has had a loyal team around him, my mother would have loved to have seen this day, the likes of Tony Moore, he was there through thick and thin for Michael, Ollie Hopkins has soldiered with Michael since they were young children, he could tell you some stories, that’s who you should be talking to.”
Behind every good man
As for his enduring popularity, including with the new Taoiseach, Joe Ring puts it down to Michael being a man of the people, who remembers everyone and never forgot where he came from. That, and also a secret weapon he has in his corner.
“Michael hasn’t changed, he is a man of the people, he works for the people, that is his mantra and philosophy, your colour or creed does not matter. People were staunch Fianna Fáil followers, but they support Michael now, they support the man, not the religion of the politics.
“The reason Michael is what he is today, is his wife Ann. There is no doubting it and never enough credit is given to her. She is a second TD, I have seen her in that office typing at 3am over the years, she is just phenomenal, and she deals with the cut and thrust of the everyday constituency dealings, when he is away on parliamentary business. He couldn’t get through the amount of people he has served and helped and the amount of work he has done without her and the rest of the team in that office on Quay Street.”
