'I felt that I had let myself down and I was wrong but it’s not the reason I’m not running again'

Meath West TD Damien English has denied that there was any connection between his decision to retire from the Dáil at the forthcoming election and the planning controversy which saw him having to resign from his junior ministerial role 21 months ago.

In fact, he says, he felt he would have regained his seat if he had decided to return. In a wide-ranging interview with the Meath Chronicle, he also denied that he was being lined up for a post as general secretary of Fine Gael, saying that the present incumbent John Carroll was doing a fine job.

He said that he felt it was time to make way for a new generation after spending 25 years in political life from the time in 1999 when he was catapulted on to a county council at the age of 21. Damien English found himself the youngest of all politicians when he started his career – he was the youngest councillor on Meath County Council and the youngest, (24) when elected to the Dáil.

During a 40-minute interview at his constituency office in Navan on Friday, Deputy English insisted he was happy with his decision to retire and had engaged in succession planning when he actively coached his personal assistant Linda Nelson Murray over a period of time to take his place. Councillor Nelson Murray has now been selected to run for the Fine Gael party in the forthcoming election.

NOW READ: Nelson Murray takes over the reins from political mentor

A planned party convention scheduled for the Newgrange Hotel was unexpectedly postponed earlier this month, which led to speculation that the Fine Gael TD was having second thoughts about resigning because of the (also unexpected) decision of Fianna Fail Senator Shane Cassells not to run in the General Election. “No, there’s no relationship between the two. I was surprised. I didn’t think Shane was in the same space as me in terms of thinking of retiring. There was a surprise alright, but it wasn’t connected with us moving the convention. I’m on the national executive of Fine Gael and we were doing an awful lot of conventions over the last month. We had operational problems. We were just overstretched. We had a few conventions and it suited with hotels as well.”

He revealed that he had flagged his decision to retire with his own headquarters in July. “On the last day of the Dail I said on RTE News that we were looking at the best combination or mixture of candidates and anyone watching that would know what I was thinking about, so we spent the summer working so that everybody would be ready to take over from me and looking at the election. It was something that was well planned. It wasn’t something that I was broadcasting because I wanted to do it in conjunction with the members. I feel very strongly that when I ran for the convention in 2001 that I would tell all the members together.”

He kicked off his political career in 1999 just as he was doing an examination in preparation for a career as a cost accountant. “I was asked would I join the ticket and it turned out that the convention was in the same hotel, the Newgrange. I didn’t go to a convention that time - I was added to the ticket. I ran for the county council in 1999 and I’m in politics ever since. In fact, I missed most of the election count that time because I was working in the pub, in Robbie O’Malley’s. I wasn’t expected to win. It was around the same time as Alison Boyle, Shane Cassells and myself who were a few new young candidates. People felt strongly at that time that there should be a young voice on the council, but I wasn’t even at the count, I was busy working and somebody came into me and said ‘you better go out to the count, you’re going to win a seat’. I said ‘what?’. That count ended at 4.30am and the next morning there were people at my house saying ‘you should go for the Dail’. We had a recount so we had to go back in for the recount.”

I thought it wasn’t something that was going to be a career or a full-time thing at all. It was just that events took over. Navan was a growing town at the time and there was no TD in the town since the time of Paddy Fitzsimons. So there was a natural gap there and it just happened.”

When he went to a Fine Gael convention in 2001 (in preparation for the 2002 election) the sitting TDs were John Bruton and John Farrelly (Meath was a single constituency at that time).

“Quite a number of other councillors like John Fanning, Shaun Lynch, Patsy O’Neill and Tom Kelly went to that convention and I was in the middle of them. We only picked two and I came third. There was a strong push from Navan to add me on. In 1997, Jim Holloway, who was one of my strongest mentors in politics, ran for the party. I was very clear with Jim for the 2002 election that if he wanted to run I wasn’t rushing or pushing. Jim and I worked very closely together on the council since 1999 and we were a great team and Jim gave me the nod in 2001. He said ‘if you want to run, go ahead because I’m not’.”

He said it was one of his teachers who encouraged him to go for politics. A neighbour of his, Kathleen Brady, a strong Fine Gael supporter, also encouraged him. Looking back on his political career and the demands of a full-time politician’s life, he says that he went in very young so “I could give it all the time that God gave me”. He had no responsibilities at the time. “I loved every bit of it and gave it everything I had and that helped me to grow politically, and grow the team.

He said his party spent a lot of time in opposition leading up to the 2011 election when Fine Gael and Labour formed a government. He says that being in opposition was hugely useful to him in learning his trade.

English was chairperson for the Oireachtas committee on enterprise and education and was appointed a Minister by Enda Kenny in 2014. He was Minister for Skills and this crossed over two departments - enterprise and education - which he says gave him wide experience. He was appointed to the housing department in 2016. He was then in enterprise during the Brexit negotiations. He was a junior minister for nine years, crossing over five government departments at different stages.

He is convinced that the place to be in politics is in government, not in opposition. “It was great to be in the Dail and being a strong voice for Meath. I enjoyed it and I hope to be there for a few more months. Again, the people choose you to be their voice and I want to thank everyone who voted for me over the years.”

Does he believe that had he decided to run he would have had a “good story to tell” about his constituency of Meath West? “Absolutely, I’d be very confident that we have a good story to tell and I’m happy to say that as a government and a TD for Meath we have a good story. It’s not that you deliver everything, you don’t. You’re part of a government, part of a team that delivers into the county.”

He feels it is the right time for him to “hand over the baton” but has no particular plan for his next step in life. “I genuinely don’t have a plan of action about where I’ll go next. I am fully committed to being a TD up to next February, hopefully the 18th or 19th in my book.”

“I’ll be mad busy helping to get Linda (Nelson Murray) elected here and then at national level as well.”

Outside politics, he quips that his wife Laura have four children between ages 11 and 15 and they take up most of their time. He has run in marathons (one every year) and likes early morning walks. He is also involved in coaching and mentoring in a football club.

When his planning controversy is raised with him, he says that he did not comment very much at the time “and I’m not going to go there now either”.

“Look, it wasn’t nice, of course it wasn’t. I made a very quick decision in this office here. I had been a minister in housing and planning and I felt it was important not to let the whole thing get started. I was very clear in making contact with Leo Varadkar and said ‘I want to see you’ and I offered to resign straight away, but even though it was many years previously – and I won’t go into the whole thing today – I still felt I had to move back. People had asked him why he felt the need to resign in the first place, but he adds: “It’s not the reason why I’m not running again. It’s not, hand over heart.”

He felt the controversy wasn’t going to be an issue had decided to run in the forthcoming election. “I felt that I had let myself down and I was wrong so I moved back. But most people I met asked me why I had resigned and I said it was wrong and it shouldn’t have happened, that was it. The truth was I wasn’t happy with it and I wouldn’t try to defend it. I know that a lot of people are very forgiving.”