Kathy Sheridan: Unseated TDs make dignified exit

Just as Kevin Humphreys was adjusting to the loss of his seat, the former Labour minister tweeted a photograph of a cute dog, perched on the shoreline. "Life after politics is rosy," read the caption. Unlikely – until you read some of the responses.

“Should’ve ran [sic] the dog,” retorted “Frilly Keane”. Another tweeted a link to welfare.ie.

Dr James Reilly – a big beast who had just lost to a backbench colleague – was giving interviews in the count centre, amid the clatter of furniture removal vans.

His metaphor of the electorate as a post-operative patient still in a lot of pain seemed just as apt for himself and all the other defeated ones licking their wounds.

"Democracy isn't great but there's nothing better around and sometimes we take it for granted, so it's hugely important that we mind it and nurture it," he said, paraphrasing Winston Churchill.

John Bowman held up a photo of the Labour class of 2011, 37 in that happy band, just a handful of whom survive. Young John Lyons from Ballymun sent out "a big thanks" to all who had voted for him.

“The past five years have been an absolute honour, a privilege that I’ll never forget,” he wrote, with a kiss-blowing emoji. “Politics is a tough game.”

In 2011, he described himself to this interviewer as “the happiest man in Ireland”. Two years later, the former teacher was finding it “very difficult to go out in your own community and actually be seen as a human being . . .” There were “a few moments,” he said, “that were too tough, when you went home and thought, ‘This isn’t worth it.”

Up to now, most politicians and activists and media took for granted the cross-party empathy and courtesy that characterised the count days, when the most irritating occurrence was likely to be a Sinn Féiner wrapping himself in the national flag. This time, some outgoing TDs – two women that we know of – on the verge of losing their livelihoods were booed and jeered at the counts.

Pained shrug

The reaction of other politicians is usually a pained shrug. But this is a problem that affects not just them. This is not good politics and concerns us all. It hardly concerns the victors right now, but a fascinating exercise in five years’ (or five months’) time will be to go back to these newly elected ones who will have made the jump from opposition into government and ask how that “hopey-changey” thing (copyright Sarah Palin) worked out for them.

Answers to questions posed in the RTÉ exit poll only confused matters. The opposition invariably pointed to water charges – a red-line issue even for Fianna Fáil, of all people, by election day – and homelessness as the outstanding issues on the doorsteps, but this poll consigned them to the minor league compared to health matters. Because health affects every one of us. Imagine if the coalition had presented a coherent health plan instead of "keep the recovery going".

A convoluted question about abortion suggested that nearly half of those polled wanted it to be freely available. Yet Labour, the party of Repeal the Eighth, was eviscerated.

The stories that captured the election headlines were obvious. The resurgence of Fianna Fáil ("Don't let Fianna Fáil back to haunt you . . . but we're baaaack," to quote a chortling Conor Lenihan); the onward march of Sinn Féin with side dish of edge ("By the way, Tom Murphy is not 'Slab'. For the record, his name is Tom", said a finger-wagging Gerry Adams at RTÉ); the ascendancy of women; the theatrical resuscitation of candidates such as Maureen O'Sullivan, Jan O'Sullivan and an uncharacteristically muted Alan Kelly; the Healy-Raes of Kerry, who captured 2.3 quotas between the two of them.

Resilience

But of them all, the story that spells hope for a civil politics is the extraordinary resilience and revival of

Green Party

leader,

Eamon Ryan

, apparently wiped out by Fianna Fáil, now back in the 32nd Dail with his polite, likeable politics of consensus and sustainability, the first to be elected in his constituency.

Meanwhile, for all the red-hot anger on the doors and all the new options, 35 per cent of the electorate failed to turn out. That’s more than one in three. Where do we go from here ?