The Race for the Áras

by Tom Reddy

  At seventy years of age, Michael D. Higgins revealed that his ‘rock and roll’ years were over when he talked to the political correspondent of the Star, Catherine Halloran. He said he had given up the booze two years earlier and replaced it with yoga as he coped with early mornings and late nights writing speeches. But rock and roll didn’t translate into having skeletons in his cupboard.

  There is absolutely nothing in my past that in any way would impede me in being President.

  I lost my taste for alcohol, really. But I did have my rock and roll years. I have lived a very full life. I am more active now than people half my age.

  It is not about age. It is about what you are able to do. Look at people like Giovanni Trapattoni and Pablo Picasso—they have done some of their best work in their older years.

  Not exactly rock and roll, but the iconic folk singer and social campaigner Christy Moore had also been asked by friends to consider standing. But he ruled himself out, saying he was supporting Michael D. ‘He is a cultured man who has negotiated a difficult road in politics,’ Moore said. He said he had always made decisions and stuck by them, ever since an IRAte bank manager had told him, as a junior member of the staff, that it was ‘inappropriate’ for clerks to sing in pubs, prompting him to opt for a life of music. ‘He told me that I had choices to make, and I made them.’

  The Star also revisited a brief comment by the colourful former Kerry South TD Jackie Healy-Rae the previous April. Healy-Rae, ten years older than Higgins, told Kerry Radio at the time that he was ‘definitely considering it anyway, and that’s no joke.’

  ‘What now?’ he was asked. ‘I’ve changed my mind about it: I’ve ruled myself out. Yerra, there would have been too much hassle involved in it for me.’

  While Higgins was happily talking about his earlier years, Mitchell was being taken to task for his. Trócaire, the Catholic overseas aid agency, had organised a conference in 1998 to which Mitchell was invited as a Fine Gael TD. Speaking about abortion, Mitchell read out the testimony of a survivor of a German death camp who had witnessed ‘gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, and women and babies shot and burned by high-school and college graduates.’ He then walked into a controversy by saying that ‘the above quote in relation to the concentration camps could easily apply to the millions of abortions which needlessly take place year after year.’

  Thirteen years later Mitchell was held to account over those comments. He would also refer to his continued donations to Trócaire later in the campaign as he took another candidate to task over how they spent their money.

  A spokesperson for Mitchell said he remained an unequivocal opponent of abortion but did not support anything that put the life of the mother in danger and ‘wouldn’t use such emotive language now, particularly in deference to the Jewish community.’

  On LM/FM radio, which covers Cos. Louth and Meath and a huge commuter belt in north Co. Dublin, he pledged to release—if he could find them—copies of the letters he had sent pleading for the lives of the two notorious criminals. ‘In particular, I don’t think I know how someone who’s pro-life can take somebody else’s life. I think that’s absolutely outrageous,’ he said in the course of the interview.

  The blogosphere and Twitter erupted again. Abusive and crass anonymous comments characterised much of what passed for discourse or debate. However, on politics.ie one contributor, Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh, provided some perspective on the controversy:

  The last presidential election in 1997 was in pre-internet days. Now, with the internet available to everyone, there is a huge potential for bad stuff to be dug up about all the candidates. Journalists, bloggers and forum users like our good selves are having and will continue to have a field day. The question is: will there be anyone left come late October whose character won’t have been well and truly assassinated?

  Among the dozens left on that one forum, ‘Cpm’ commented:

  I never thought I’d hear myself say it but Michael Twee is looking like the best candidate at this stage. Let’s just put him in Áras an Uachtaráin, lock the doors so he can’t get out, and try to forget about the whole horrid affair for seven years.

  Mitchell was contacted by the Irish Independent, seeking his reaction to comments from the retired Fianna Fáil TD Ben Briscoe. Briscoe, like his politician father, Bob, was well connected to the Jewish political caucus in the United States, where both had raised political funds. When Briscoe retired in 2002 to his home in Co. Kildare, at the age of sixty-eight, he had served as a Fianna Fáil TD for thirty-seven years. He had followed faithfully in the footsteps of his father, a Dáil deputy from 1927 to 1965 and twice Lord Mayor of Dublin, but he had minimal contact with the party since his retirement.

  Mitchell, Briscoe’s constituency colleague, had served Dublin South-Central since 1981, and both had served on Dublin City Council and had been Lord Mayor. Asked his opinion on the election race by the Irish Independent, Briscoe was forthright: ‘What was done to Gay Byrne was disgusting. He didn’t know what he was getting into. It was a very bad call by Micheál Martin.’ But whatever the political anoraks cared about Briscoe’s attack on the party leader, his subsequent comments were to prove incendiary to Fianna Fáil members. He was asked who he would support in the race for the Áras now that Gaybo had been ‘badly treated’ and had pulled out of the race. ‘I’m backing Gay Mitchell,’ he said, ‘because I served the people of Dublin with him for more than twenty years.’

  A spokesperson for Mitchell was quoted in the following day’s press as welcoming Briscoe’s support and claiming that many grass-roots Fianna Fáil supporters were backing his candidacy. The comment was a straightforward bid for number 2s—an appeal across party lines that were defined by the Civil War.

  Fianna Fáil bit their tongues and issued no official comment. However, Briscoe’s mould-breaking endorsement of an opposition party’s candidate provoked a storm of abuse and negative comment from party members on Twitter and on a Fianna Fáil internet discussion group.

  Alison O’Connor, a columnist with the Irish Independent, offered the opinion that Gay Byrne had done the right thing in pulling out of the race and in doing what he was best at: being a broadcaster. She also set out the case for Micheál Martin’s intervention in trying to get Byrne on board.

  I say fair play to him for having a bit of a punt. If it had come off, it could have been viewed as a classically cheeky Fianna Fail stroke.

  The party, desperately in need of any kind of a boost, hasn’t had a bad week. As well as the positive publicity, it has made the important discovery that not everything the party touches, or is associated with, turns immediately toxic in terms of public opinion. So what if Micheál was so hands-on that he didn’t bother with the fig leaf of asking someone else to make contact with Gay?

  The man has a mammoth, if not impossible, task in attempting to rebuild Fianna Fail. It cannot be a case of politics as usual. It’s going to take the application of a number of different approaches and attitudes before he finds some way forward. The party would be absolutely daft to run an official candidate for the presidency.

  The bottom line here is that the race for the Aras is wide open. However unpredictable the mood, one apparent certainty is that people seem not to be sure what they want as long as it’s different. But the campaign proper has yet to get started and we will have hopefully gotten over all the daftness by then.

  The madness of the silly season was to abate over the coming week, with the candidates continuing their low-key ground war in the constituencies and with minimal national news coverage. The two big beasts, Byrne and Norris, were off the stage. Mitchell was dealing effectively with comments he had made more than a decade earlier, and his promise to release the two letters seeking clemency for convicted criminals on death row in the United States seemed to guarantee that there was no smoking gun or further controversy in their content.

  The two independents, Davis
and Gallagher, also campaigned outside the capital and were more effective in the use of social media, constantly tweeting and updating their Facebook and web sites with photographs and text.

  Another retired politician, Ivan Yates, had been the youngest politician in the Dáil for three terms as a Fine Gael TD for Wexford and as a former minister. His Celtic Bookmakers chain of more than forty shops throughout the country, employing 230 people, had gone into receivership earlier in the year. He presented the morning news programme on Newstalk, the rival to RTE’s ‘Morning Ireland’.

  On Thursday 18 August he wrote his regular political opinion column for the Examiner. The campaign had been receiving ‘hyperactive media attention’, he said. The media were building up the candidates only to knock them down.

  It resembles one of the poorer Big Brother summer series. Evictions are coming fast and furious—David Norris and Gay Byrne were forced to leave the house, before they could be voted off.

  Then, provocatively, he examined the campaign credentials of the candidates and cast doubt on Gay Mitchell’s ability to reflect and gain support from the high standing of Fine Gael in the opinion polls and from its recent historic general election victory. This was to be blunt language from Yates, who had been Minister for Agriculture from 1994 to 1997, at the same time as his party colleague Mitchell held the role of Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach and Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs with Special Responsibility for European Affairs.

  On paper the Fine Gael nominee should have a significant head start. Unfortunately for Mitchell, many consider him more suited to a frontline combative political post than a diplomatic one. He takes no prisoners. He is perceived as Dublin-centric. FG party leadership preferred either Cox or [Mairead] McGuinness. He may not obtain half of the FG current market share. He successfully exploited antipathy to party leadership in gaining the nomination. While the party will close ranks around him in coming weeks, this may not be enough to get him more than the line.

  Yates was equally tough on the other candidates. Because of a bad back problem he often conducted interviews in the studio standing up rather than sitting across from his guests. A large man with a large voice and a unique interviewing manner, he could be at the least an unusual experience, and even an intimidating one, to any but the most experienced and self-confident guests.

  He suggested that the change in the bookies’ odds—from odds-against to odds-on 13:8 to 8:11, following the REDC Paddy Power poll of the previous week in favour of Higgins—was defining, and that the poll, which included second-preference and subsequent intentions, clearly made Higgins the favourite.

  However, although reaching that conclusion, he also suggested that the retailer, independent senator, sometime television host and multimillionaire Feargal Quinn, who had recently sold the Superquinn chain of supermarkets, would make a credible candidate. He initially praised him and then somewhat damned him with the comment:

  He looks the part and has enthusiastic eloquence for every occasion. At 75 years of age, he’s somewhat auld—but ageism is now a criminal offence. We could do a lot worse.

  The following day another radio presenter, Matt Cooper, former editor of the Sunday Tribune and presenter of Today FM’s ‘Last Word’, a drivetime afternoon programme, referred to the attendance of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at the lunch hosted by President McAleese for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on the first day of their visit to Ireland. Ó Muircheartaigh revealed to Cooper that he had interviewed the Queen’s son, Prince Edward, in London a year earlier at, of all places, a greyhound track. Ó Muircheartaigh was also to act act as mc for the appearance in Dublin city centre of the American president, Barack Obama, on his whistle-stop tour of the country.

  Ó Muircheartaigh was to flirt with the idea of running for the Presidency. On Monday 15 August the Evening Herald confirmed that he was now considering a late entry into the race. He said he would make a decision on whether to run ‘shortly’.

  I haven’t ruled out anything but even at the dogs last night [in Dundalk] I almost left with the number of people that were saying it to me. I will give it a bit of consideration but it’s a major undertaking.

  I won’t spend too much time. Usually when I give something a thought I make a decision [but] I have never been involved in a thing like this and it was never my intention.

  The following day’s papers carried his assertion that he had been approached by representatives of a number of political parties to stand in recent months, that he would only stand as an independent and that his decision would be made in the next ten days. He continually refused to say who had approached him from the main parties.

  There are very good candidates declared already but I haven’t approached anyone. I haven’t been nominated and it’s a difficult job to get a nomination. Maybe too difficult in the world that we’re in today. If I stood, I would insist on standing as an independent. Politics never came into sport, and all shades of political opinion are represented, and for that reason I wouldn’t stand representing any party, no matter what party it was. The only thing that got me interested in it is the people and the number of people who say they want me to be a part of it.

  Take everyone now who’s been nominated so far—they’re very well known and I don’t know if there’s any point in spending money to get people who are already well known more well known.

  He added that age shouldn’t be an issue for any candidate.

  On Sunday 19 September 2010 Ó Muircheartaigh had given his last broadcast when he covered the all-Ireland football final between Cork and Down from Croke Park. (Two days earlier he had celebrated his eightieth birthday by climbing Brandon Mountain, a few miles from his Kerry home.) Outside the stadium, canny hawkers were selling pocket radios to fans ‘for Mícheál’s last broadcast.’ After the minor match Ó Muircheartaigh was led onto the pitch in front of a packed crowd of more than 81,000 people, and the president of the GAA, Christy Cooney, presented him with a framed oil painting of his beloved Brandon Mountain. Ó Muircheartaigh’s fellow-commentator Marty Morrissey told the cheering crowd that ‘Thursday was a momentous and yet a sad morning for Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, because the man we all love in RTE—our hero, our idol, our friend—had decided to hang up his microphone in a few weeks’ time.’

  According to Ó Muircheartaigh,

  age was never a factor with me, and I’m involved with Third Age, an organisation started by Mary Nally to get people to remain active, people who had more or less retired in the literal meaning of the word, to get them to come back out, to be going places and doing things regardless of their age.

  I think people should remain active for as long as they like. They should remain in employment as long as they feel they have something to offer, and I think more and more people are accepting that now.

  Despite his active retirement, however, Ó Muircheartaigh became the second broadcaster to rule himself out of the race after an intense week of speculation about whether he could secure wide support. Now, just a few days after his eighty-first birthday, he said he would not be contesting for the Park.

  I am honoured and humbled that so many people from all sections of society should have contacted me offering support and assistance. I want to thank them sincerely for their kind offers.

  Meanwhile fierce debate raged on Fianna Fáil’s confidential internet discussion group about Micheál Martin’s handling of the presidential race. The flavour of many of the comments was that Éamon de Valera would be turning in his grave. The president of the University of Limerick Students’ Union, Derek Daly, went a step further, labelling the party leader a ‘disgrace’ over his handling of the presidential election—comments that caused controversy when they ended up in the national press.

  On the same day that the Queen of England was visiting Áras an Uachtaráin the social media campaign to have the former RTE presenter (now Lyric FM presenter) Marty Whelan nominated as a candidate had taken off, and it was repo
rted in the print media. Whelan said he was ‘enjoying the fun of it, and I think the people behind the campaign are having fun with it. I don’t even have a Facebook page, to be honest, but it seems like I have a bit of support.’ A few days later he made it clear that he was not seeking a nomination.

  The columnist Shane Hegarty of the Irish Times, with his tongue firmly in cheek, begged to differ with Whelan’s decision.

  I actually think he’d be a pretty decent president. Years of practice at the Rose of Tralee and ‘Fame and Fortune’ mean he is perhaps the country’s greatest expert at making Jovial Conversation with Mildly Bewildered Strangers. As far as I can tell, this is one of the key roles performed by presidents, another being Delaying the Irish Rugby Team from Starting Matches.

  Ten days earlier a newly established Facebook page and Twitter site had attracted hundreds of people to ‘like’ it within a couple of hours. The page was the beginning of a campaign: Martin Sheen for President. This was the first of a series of celebrity campaigns, none of which existed in reality but all providing extra colour and entertainment. Sheen was the American actor who had famously starred in Apocalypse Now and, more relevantly, the blockbusting nbc series ‘The West Wing’, in which he played Josiah Bartlet, fictional President of the United States. The Facebook page was set up by Emmet Murphy, a native of Douglas, Cork, and was serious in tone—certainly not tongue-in-cheek—and contained numerous clips from the popular ‘West Wing’ series. It also attracted widespread press coverage in the United States. Sheen could qualify to run for President of Ireland because his mother, Mary Anne Phelan, was an Irish citizen. She was born in Borrisokane, Co. Tipperary, in 1903 and later married Francisco Estévez, Sheen’s father.