Meathman's Diary: Honesty policy from Murphy

The week of General Election 2024 also saw the passing of the former education minister, Gemma Hussey, who served in Garret Fitzgerald’s coalition government of the 1980s, a time when this country was in a deep economic morass, and it was not an easy time to be in cabinet. She was one of our first high profile female ministers, but she was also a groundbreaker in another way – as the first modern day politician to publish a political memoir in the form of a cabinet diary, entitled 'At the Cutting Edge'.

There have been numerous political outpourings since, the most recent being ‘Running from Office’, by Eoghan Murphy, who served as Minister for Housing and Local Government from 2017 to 2020. Subtitled ‘Confessions of Ambition and Failure in Politics’, it is described as “an unflinching insight into the role of a government minister, sharing with searing honesty the personal and political cost when ambition and idealism clash with reality”.

And while the book is not going to set the awards panels or the prize juries alight, it certainly is quite honest, Murphy saying his aim was not to write about Irish politics per se: the policies, the parties, and personalities; or even the big events during his time in politics, which he just skirts on. “I wanted to write something more personal than that, in an effort to better illustrate the people behind our politicians – their motivations and their fears.”

It was while he was on a gap year from studying for an arts degree that he became interested in politics, and went on to apply for a place on the international relations programme in the Department of War Studies in King’s College, London, before coming back to work for the Department of Foreign Affairs here, then getting into domestic politics, probably with more of an idealistic policy view, rather than a local constituency focus, as the endgame.

The book is a bit disjointed – jumping from one period to another, but he does discuss how the impact being a frontline minister - in the Department of Housing – affected his mental health, and the pressures from social media abuse. He was on local radio giving an interview in December 2011 when Shane McEntee died. He says he didn’t know Shane well, but “I cried that Christmas, unexpectedly, suddenly.” When he eventually opened up to a colleague “I learned he had been going through something similar …. But for all the talk from politicians about mental health awareness and whatever the in-vogue phrases were, it wasn’t discussed openly amongst us.”

He also spoke of the habit, especially as a backbencher, of ending up in the Dáil bar between votes of an evening.

“You didn’t need to spend five minutes in the Dáil bar to see there was a general problem: in what other workplace did people get drunk on the premises at least two nights a week?”.

Maybe that's the first conversation the politicans need to look at - the necessity of a bar in Leinster House.