Complex creatures, Israeli Bonds and a first Dáil Term

Breaffy man Enda Conway was one of the happiest people in the TF Hotel and Theatre back in November.

His 200/1 bet had come through and Aontú’s Paul Lawless was elected a TD for Mayo.

Reflecting on the campaign and its outcome, Lawless explained that from the outset he never focused on whether he would win.

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“If I was focused on the outcome, I wouldn’t have run,” he said. “By all accounts – media, bookmakers, even podcasts covering Mayo – I wasn’t even mentioned. The experts weren’t giving me a shot. So I focused on the process: raising concerns people have, making sure they were heard, and ensuring those issues received political energy.”

Fine Gael’s Keira Keogh got her first taste of electoral politics in the local election that June and narrowly missed out on the final seat in the Westport area.

Building from there, she took the fourth seat in the general election, with a whopping 38 percent of the Westport electoral area vote.

As the Dáil breaks for its summer recess, both first-time TDs share their experience of their first term with The Mayo News.

Political mentors

SPENDING a day in Leinster House with Michael Ring and seeing how the voting bells work and where you collect your post helped ‘demystify’ the institution for Deputy Keogh.

The collegiality of Leinster House is something she wasn’t expecting. One example of the “great support within the parliamentary party”, was calling Pascal Donohoe, when she was on the way to the Tonight Show, and “he was able to tell me about a new bit of legislation that’s working its way through the EU that will protect the euro currency.”

The lack of an induction process struck Deputy Lawless: “If you want to become a teacher or a nurse or a doctor or a guard or, you know, a lawyer, or there are so many various professions, there’s an education process and induction process.

“The first couple of months was a huge learning curve, and there’s no doubt about that. There’s no hand holding and certainly, in a small party, you have to find your feet quickly. You have to try and learn as fast as you can.”

He has been frustrated by the lack of sitting days.

“When we come back after the summer recess, it’ll almost be a year after this election, and yet the government has only sat for 59 days and then. So in many ways, this government has been a stay at home government.”

Despite still being in his 30s, Lawless is no political novice. He first cut his teeth politically as a 15- year-old campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty.

Declan Ganley congratulated him upon his election, tweeting: “I’m proud to say he cut his political teeth as a hardworking teenage campaigner back on the Libertas campaign bus back in 2009.”

Core to Lawless’ politics is the view that “that power and decisions that are made closest to the people are generally better decisions. In my time in politics, here in Dublin, I would like to see further power return to Mayo.

“It’s really hard for local politicians and national politicians to hold these state agencies to account as a result,” he says of services being outsourced to institutions such as Uisce Éireann.

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He was struck by a comment by Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness that some people think the government are everyone in Leinster House, and some people think the governments are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But he said, in reality, the government is the cabinet, and increasingly, the government is the party leaders.

He says: “Ministers can so often be led by their department, led by their advisors, and not from their back benchers and the opposition. And I think that is a real shame.”

His path also crossed with Paddy Cosgrave when he worked for The Web Summit: “It was a very valuable experience and certainly has helped me in politics. In a start-up company, you assume responsibilities for so many different tasks, so many different issues that you might be years developing and gaining in a larger company.”

Importance of dialogue
ONE of the frustrations for Westport-based TD Keogh is when issues are “misconstrued or misrepresented by the opposition.”
She highlights a “very contentious vote on Sinn Féin’s motion in relation to the Israeli Bonds coming through the Central Bank.”

Having received a detailed briefing from the Minister for Finance on the importance of the independence of the Central Bank, which included legal advice from the Attorney General that pointed out elements of the motion that were unworkable, she voted against it.

“It was really, really difficult to spend hours on it and then the opposition can hold up signs saying that we’re supporting genocide, and that has real consequences.”

People turned up outside her clinic in Westport with posters saying “genocide supporter”.

A big believer in dialogue, she invited them in and “sat with them, each individually, for 15 minutes and explained to them why I voted the way I voted, the advice that we had received, the steps that we’re trying to take in relation to Gaza.”

They asked her why she didn’t take a stand and vote against her party, she said: “If I vote to take a stand just for the sake of it, on an unworkable piece of legislation, then I’ll be kicked out of the party. I won’t be chair of the Children and Equality committee. And like, there’s other issues that are really important to me that I feel by being in Fine Gael I can influence.”

When asked why she hadn’t attended any of their vigils, she in turn asked: “How can I attend a vigil when you’re holding up a sign saying I’m supporting genocide and putting that up on social media?”

By the end of their discussion, she hopes that they understood her point of view.

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During the election campaign, Deputy Lawless was the only candidate to engage with the Burke family outside a hustings in Claremorris.

“I went to them, talked to them, and engaged with them. I think it’s really important. It’s my job, in fact, as a public representative, to engage with constituents and to hear their concerns. And I would be happy to work for every constituent across Mayo,” he said.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t really afforded the opportunity of that engagement. I was doing what a politician should do: go out and engage with people, and I would do so again. I’ll engage with anyone, to be honest. It’s just unfortunate I wasn’t given the chance to have a more meaningful exchange that day.”

Complex creatures

The all consuming nature of the job is summed up by Deputy Lawless saying that his phone is always on and he has asked over 300 parliamentary questions this term. He recalls receiving a call on Christmas Day from a constituent who “was in the depths of despair and had no one else to call.”

The scale of the representations that TDs make is echoed by Deputy Keogh making 650 representations on behalf of constituents.

Away from politics, the Aontú deputy keeps between ten and twelve bee hives in Knock and Claremorris.

“They are fascinating creatures. They’re very complex creatures. You can never predict what they are going to do next.”

Conscious of the human side, Deputy Keogh says she has “heard a lot of people burning out and you’re not going to be any good to anybody if you’re dead.”

As reported previously in The Mayo News, she has received ‘vile comments’ online. She says sharing more personal parts of her life is important because “if my Instagram was purely political posts, I think people could forget that there’s a human on the other side of it.”

Every two and a half weeks, Deputy Keogh forces herself to take a break, even if it’s for four or five hours. She will watch Netflix or go to a spa to switch off.

Officially the Dáil is on recess until the middle of September but there’s no doubt these two Mayo TDs will still be busy as bees over the next few months.