'Family supports and childcare are so very important today'
MEATH WEST CANDIDATE FOCUS: AISLING DEMPSEY (FIANNA FAIL)
As Aisling Dempsey faces into a General Election as the sole Fianna Fail candidate in Meath West, her biggest task will be to break out of her home town of Trim (population 9,563) into Navan (33,886) where she is relatively unknown, she admitted this week.
The 40-year-old councillor was selected by her party to run in the upcoming election following the decision of Senator Shane Cassells not to put his name forward this time around. She feels that the Dempsey name still carries some heft in the constituency and a core Fianna Fail vote is also there. In the recent local elections in Navan, the party feels it did reasonably well, clocking up 2,633 first preference votes with three candidates (although losing a seat).
Dempsey has opened an office in Navan and her election team has been up and running to put her name out and gain more recognition.
Her priorities are tackling the cost of living, dealing with the difficulties of being able to purchase a home, and childcare costs.
“If the family isn’t looked after then nothing is looked after. Family supports and child care are so important. Some people find it difficult to go to work because it’s not worth their while”.
She feels the burdens of society lie more on women’s shoulders than men’s.
Is it fair to say there might be a “dynasty thing” going on with the Dempsey name and does she feel people might shy away from that?
“It doesn’t insult me when people refer to my father rather than myself. There are people who say ‘your dad did this or that for me’ and it’s worth it to hear that. There’s a mention of the Dempsey dynasty but more and more now I hear about the nepobaby. It interests me why people say things like that but after all you have to be voted in. I accept fully that in 2019 I got Noel Dempsey’s vote and I know a huge percentage of his vote was his – but my family is not that big, others had to vote for me! A woman said to be in 2019 ‘I’ll give you the vote this time but next time it’s on your head’. I had people in 2019 who, when I asked them if they had any issues would say ‘not at all’ but would tell him (Noel) and not me. There is a loyalty to him and the name which I won’t deny”.
She is entering into “Premier League country” but is she ready for the rough and tumble of national politics and play on a field outside the comfort zone of local politics were everyone is so nice to each other - perhaps because the two main parties on the council are in coalition at national level.
“I remember being in the Dail – and we weren’t there that often – and hearing my father and Pat Rabbitte absolutely tearing strips off one another in the chamber and I remember being really upset and when they came out they were having the chat and shaking hands. They could disagree on a political level but still respect one another. I think all that might have changed – when you disagree these days, it appears that you have to disagree on all levels. There’s not that respect anymore”.
Growing up in the Dempsey household it was very hard to avoid politics. Although it was a normal home in all other respects, the politics buzz was palpable. “It was all around us. It’s hard not to be influenced but I wouldn’t have been involved on a large scale with politics. We were the envelope stuffers and the golf classic bag stuffers and involved in leaflet drops and that sort of thing. Life was normal for us – Noel went to work at six o’clock in the morning and came home at midnight”.
The family grew up around public service amid the realisation of how important it was. Aisling Dempsey says she “didn’t have a political bone in my body”. Her brother had an interest but that was on the communications and media side of things. Three of the children more or less eschewed politics – “in fact I would probably have done my best to look as little like a politician’s daughter as I could. I was loud, I was a messer”. She did well at school “but didn’t try to do well”. She says people sometimes said to her “you don’t look like Noel Dempsey’s daughter!”. People had a particular conception of what a politician’s daughter should look like.
While politics wasn’t front and centre in her life, Dempsey realised the importance of community and how people should give back to society in some way. It was only when she met James Flood and got engaged, went looking for a house, got married, had a family that she realised how it was possible to see the gaps in services for people – getting to see consultants for some medical conditions, buying a house, how children were going to get places in schools.
It was only when she reached her 30s she realised she should be doing something tangible instead of just being a spectator. The role of women in public life is so important, she says. “Six months or a year ago we were talking about women in politics all the time, how are we going to encourage women, how are we going to get more women involved. No one in my whole life ever asked me if I would get involved in politics – I was always asked ‘would one of your brothers not do it?’ and even when my brother-in-law, Ronan McKenna, wanted to become a councillor no one batted an eyelid that he wasn’t one of the Dempseys. No one asked me until Ronan decided after 10 years as a councillor that his family and career had overtaken his ambition in politics”.
She had worked for McKenna in the 2009 elections and it was him who prompted her to take up the mantle in Meath County Council. In her first election as a candidate she says that most people would day to her “I voted for your father, I’ll vote for you” .
“The hope was that I would get his vote which was always very high and he was very well respected. So I got there, in fourth place I think”. In this year’s elections she reckons that the Fianna Fail vote, including hers and that of Cllr Padraig Coffey, was “quite good”.
For the first couple of years she was very happy to be a county councillor alongside her full-time job. The Covid pandemic arrived very quickly after she was elected so five full days in an office wasn’t a reality. She found it hard to keep herself going as a councillor because she had just evenings and weekends to devote to constituency duties. However, Covid “helped more with the work-life balance”. Politics for her is less a “job” and more of a passion for her – “I don’t have any other hobbies, this is it”.
At 40, she was happy dealing with the daily bread-and-butter issues of a local community.
“You can see what can be done locally and you might be able to help an individual out of a particular bind but then you look to national level and you see what needs to be done, and being frustrated at things not being done, or maybe your perspective is not being reflected in the Dail. I said to myself, why couldn’t I do it at national level?”.