Independent TD Maureen O'Sullivan says being in politics can be lonely and is 'a very difficult world', writes MARY MINIHAN
INDEPENDENT TD Maureen O’Sullivan, who won a byelection on the same day as George Lee, bumped into RTÉ’s former economics editor in Leinster House on Monday when he resigned.
Lee was rushing out to explain his dramatic departure from Fine Gael and the Dáil to reporters, so there was only time to wish him well, but O’Sullivan could not help reflecting on that day just eight months earlier. They had both arrived as new deputies, he representing Dublin South and she Dublin Central.
She was with community workers, activists and family members, and observed “the fanfare around George, all of the party”.
Then last Monday, “looking at him going out on his own. Now it didn’t seem to bother him, he was smiling, but I just thought to myself – the contrast,” she says.
O’Sullivan was shocked at Lee’s decision. Seeing him around, she thought he was “very much one of the boys” and had not guessed he considered himself isolated, as she admits to feeling.
Does she have some dark days too? “Loads of dark days, not a few, quite a number that you just think what’s it all about and where’s it going and what am I doing here?
“Not that I’ve been tempted to go but I have been saying this is a very difficult world, will I survive in it? It’s very, very stressful and I never did stress in my life because I just coped, I got on with things.”
She also finds TV and radio appearances difficult, adding these would surely have been “child’s play” to Lee, who she thinks should have considered continuing as an Independent.
O’Sullivan was the late Tony Gregory’s election agent and took his seat in the June 2009 byelection brought about by his death. Her campaign spend was a modest €11,516.
Like many TDs, she previously worked as a teacher, but now enjoys little of the camaraderie she left behind in the staffroom. “I wouldn’t say I’m close to anybody. If I go into the restaurant I’m usually sitting on my own. I haven’t been in the bar at night.”
The slow pace of change in the Oireachtas frustrates her and Ministers’ responses to parliamentary questions are also a source of annoyance. In her previous role, if her students did not answer the questions she set properly she would simply make them do it again, she laughs.
O’Sullivan does acknowledge that the money is better, saying she is now very well paid. In another parallel with Lee’s situation, she can always return to her previous workplace thanks to a long-standing agreement under which teaching jobs are kept open for TDs. It was not appropriate for her to retire or resign her teaching post, she insists, as she enjoyed the job and “because my school is over quota, if I resigned I wouldn’t be replaced”.
She would like to work on legislation around byelections, believing a law should be introduced to ensure a vacancy is filled within six months when a TD resigns, retires or dies. Leaving a constituency without a TD is insulting to constituents, she says.
O’Sullivan sees little difference between being an Independent and being a member of an Opposition party, in the sense that she considers both powerless in a system where power resides in Cabinet. She will never join a party, she insists.
Long-serving deputies assure her it can take at least a year-and-a-half to settle into Leinster House. Among the most supportive are former Fianna Fáil TD Joe Behan and fellow Independent Finian McGrath, along with Green TD Ciarán Cuffe and Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.
What does she believe she will achieve for her constituents? “I’m not going to change the world. I don’t think I’m going to change Dublin Central even, never mind the world. But I do know that I’m working hard and I just hope I can continue in Tony’s legacy.”