Bringing it back home to Erris

GIRL POWER?Mayo’s Sinn Féin candidate Rose Conway Walsh is pictured with Mary Lou McDonald, Vice President of Sinn Féin, at her election launch in the Welcome Inn Hotel.?Pic: Alison Laredo

Áine Ryan looks beyond Rose Conway Walsh’s political profile and uncovers strong community convictions

FIRST out of the traps in Co Mayo to declare her candidacy for the 32nd DΡil, Sinn Féin councillor Rose Conway Walsh has already proven herself as a formidable performer in the chamber at Castlebar’s Áras an Chontae since her election in 2009.
 It is already on the record that she has been a passionate advocate for her home region of Erris: for better health and disability services, both gender and geographical equality, sustainable fishing and aquaculture policies and the proper State management of natural resources.
But what motivates this mother of two young boys to devote her time to the tough world of politics?   
It might be almost 30 years since Erris native Rosaleen Lally was tasked with marking her friend Rose while playing Gaelic football for the Sam Maguires in London but she still has the bruises to prove it.
Well, she may be laughing when she recalls these athletic tussles but Lally is serious when she tells The Mayo News that characteristic doggedness and tenacity on the field of play has been transformed into Conway-Walsh’s busy political life, which is underpinned by community convictions about her native place.  
When the key community development project, Iorrais Le Chéile, was closed down with 30 days notice last September, Rose Conway Walsh, its co-ordinator, highlighted the fact that it had 2,500 service-users alone in 2015. Among the services it had provided were anti-bullying programmes, homework clubs, outreach facilities for Mayo Women’s Support Services and The Carers’ Association. At the time, Conway Walsh told The Mayo News that her ‘ ‘immediate concern was for the many vulnerable people who use the project and the services associated with the project, as well as the staff who are losing their jobs’.
Six months later Rose continues to work for her community and not simply as a sitting Sinn Féin councillor since 2009 or because she is now on the ticket for the General Election.
“I know her to be an avid supporter of people with disability and particularly women who are in all sorts of difficult situations, particularly domestic violence. She has done so much community work and made a huge difference to people lives that will never be heard about,” Rosaleen Lally says.
She observes that ‘it doesn’t matter to Rose from what political strain a person is, if they have a need she will work for them’.
“There are people who will vote for Rose who do not agree with Sinn Féin’s politics. They will vote for her because of her convictions and record. They will also vote for her because Erris needs a strong TD representing them,” she adds.

Erris emigration
BORN in London, Rose’s family had moved back to Ballycroy before she started primary school. Herself and her seven surviving siblings – a sister died when she was a baby –  were raised in a small council house and attended Shranamonragh National School. Times were difficult though and at one point all the siblings were forced to emigrate to the UK again. Six of them have since returned home while her widowed mother, ‘a wonderful Kerry woman’ now lives in Castlebar.  
After attending Our Lady’s Secondary School in Belmullet and Galway RTC (now GMIT), Rose was on the road again to London aged 19.
Her former principal, Sr Breeda Leonard, remembers Rose as ‘a very pleasant, ambitious and hard-working girl’.
“Rose always had a smile on her face and as she says herself she ‘wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth’. She had to come across a lot of obstacles, had to travel 18 miles to school every day and being the third eldest from a large family, it wasn’t always easy,” she says.  
She recalls how she ‘was very interested in sport and was always a team player’ and ‘a great organiser’ for trips away.
“Once Rose took on something, you knew it was done. She was mature beyond her years and while many of her peers may have ended up working in factories she went to third-level, had to emigrate then it was the eighties but came back and has since used her expertise and potential to give back to the people of Erris,” Sr Breeda said.  
In 1985, aged 19, Rose arrived in London with £5 in her pocket and within a week had her first job in the Marlborough pub on Holloway Road. This led to a job in a bookmakers and working on a number of marketing, public relations and event management projects. Friends and colleagues say there was always a great sense of support and camaraderie among the Mayo emigrants which deeply informs to this day Conway Walsh’s convictions about emigration and her work with those who manage to make the journey back home.      
Back home in 1998, she started work with South West Mayo Development Company and over the following years married her husband, Noel, moved to Belmullet, had her two boys, Anthony and Peter, now aged 12  and 14, and also completed a Masters degree in Local Government.
 
Feminist feat
CONWAY Walsh was first elected to Mayo County Council in 2009 and made history as the first woman councillor elected in Belmullet since the foundation of the State. She topped the poll in the newly-created West Mayo Municipal District in the 2014 local election, with 2,078 first preference votes.
While her Independent council colleague, Michael Kilcoyne says she is ‘an excellent public representative who passionately advocates for the people who voted for her and is totally committed to her area,’ he believes her membership of Sinn Féin will proved a disadvantage.
“If Rose was an Independent, she could top the poll in this election but when you are a member of a political party, and that could be Fianna FΡil or Fine Gael too you are under the party whip,” Cllr Kilcoyne said.
He observed that ‘her record in the council chamber was excellent, her contributions always well-researched’.
“There are very few issues she would speak on that I would disagree with,” Kilcoyne said.