Determined to serve the citizens of Cork

IN the 2019 local elections, Labour Party candidate for Cork City South-East Peter Horgan received 888 first preferences, and finished on 1,034 votes, being eliminated on the seventh count. He says the intervening years have only solidified his reasons for wanting to serve on Cork City Council.

He says he’s running again because he feels the council has lost sight of its priorities over the past decade. “I want to try and get our eye back on the ball, and back toward what a local authority should do best, which is serve the citizens of the city,” Peter says.

“A lot of the basics that a local authority should do, the basic public realm enhancement, the basic cleaning of our public areas of our communities, and the basic running of our city, they need to be done right, and at the moment I don’t think they’re being done right.”

He feels the most pressing issues facing his ward are transport, housing, education, and health.

“If you have a good public transport network, it increases the social mobility of people in that area. We saw it in Germany, where they introduced a climate ticket very similar to what the Labour Party modelled and suggested last year, but wasn’t taken on board. The social mobility of people from a lower socio-economic income was increased to a significant amount, according to research by German universities.

“I do believe that BusConnects needs to work, but it has to work in a way that gets people out of the car a couple of days a week at the very minimum at the very start, and shows people that this is a benefit of a good public transport system, but we’re not there.”

He says he finds it frustrating that there is no passionate champion for public transport in Cork city “at local, Dáil or Seanad level” and that is a role he sees for himself.

“I do want to be a champion for public transport in Cork city, but there’s a view now in Cork that public transport is becoming a bit of a white elephant, a bit like the event centre, with BusConnects likely to be snarled up in legal challenges forever, potentially, and the Luas is going to be snarled up in further delays.”

He feels Transport Minister Eamon Ryan and Cork City Council have had a “hands-off” approach to BusConnects and need to be front and centre in helping to deliver services in advance of sustainable transport corridors.

“I have yet to see any sort of public transport campaign, either through The Echo, or the radio stations locally, by City Hall, to encourage people to take the bus. We have a park and ride that is like a ghost bus most of the time, it isn’t open at the right time for commuters, it’s in the wrong location, and we’ve yet to see any park and ride locations become apparent on the southside or the northside.”

Peter is from a trade union background, and all through secondary school in Mahon, he was interested in politics. “I studied government in UCC, and it was from there I got a grounding in how institutions work, how they should work, and how they don’t work.”

A stint as a political journalist with The Munster Express followed, and then with the Cork Independent, where he says he met a lot of people and learned a lot about politics in the city and county. Ten years ago, he began his current job, working as parliamentary assistant to Seán Sherlock TD, who was at the time minister for state for research and innovation.

He mentions Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), as a political hero. “I think it might be where I am personally, as I have had to go back and forth to the UK for medical procedures with my son. I think the NHS is a model we should emulate, I think you should have access to healthcare, regardless of your social standing, and it shouldn’t cripple you.”

He adds that while he is a member of the Labour Party, he admires people from across the political spectrum.

“I wouldn’t be a tribal member of a political party, and I think to achieve success in politics, success for a community and for a society, you have to be able to work with people across party lines, and you have to be able to give credit where credit is due.”

Finally, why should people vote for Peter Horgan? “I believe that I can be a different voice to what’s in there already, I believe that I won’t accept the excuses that are given year after year by the executive, and I believe that I can sift through the nonsense that comes from certain bureaucratic quarters and find out what is actually happening.

“I’ll be truthful with people, I’ll tell people that if it can be done, I’ll work night and day to get it done, but if it can’t be done, I’ll tell them that too. I won’t give people false hope,” he says. “People do need hope in Cork city, but they don’t need false hope.”

Profile

Name: Peter Horgan.

Party: Labour.

Ward: Cork City South-East.

Age: 35.

Family/background: Married to Celine, he is dad to Charlie (four) and Theo (one-and-a-bit).

Where is home? A Blackrock native, he went to Nagle Community College, and then UCC, and now lives in Maryborough Hill.

Day job? A former journalist, he is this year celebrating his 10th year as parliamentary assistant to Labour Party Cork East TD Seán Sherlock.

When did you first become interested in politics? From a very young age, I got very interested in the budget, but that might have been because it was on instead of whatever was supposed to be on RTÉ2 that day, probably The Den.”

Chances of getting elected? He’ll probably have his work cut out. Cork South-East is something of a ward of death, with a current sitting Lord Mayor, three former lord mayors, the Tánaiste’s parliamentary assistant, and a party leader (Lorna Bogue of Rabharta Glas) due to run what is likely to be a media-friendly European campaign.

As a local area representative, he has been a very visible, likeable, and active presence and done a lot of work in the ward since 2019. Time will tell whether that proves enough next June.