'I'm open to offers': Former Cork councillor Deirdre Forde on life after council 

“The woman that doesn’t change her mind is too rigid altogether,” says former Fine Gael councillor and Lord Mayor of Cork Deirdre Forde.

A self-described “accidental politician”, she was first elected to Cork County Council for Fianna Fáil in the Carrigaline local electoral area in 1999, and re-elected in 2004, before being elected for Fine Gael in 2009, hence the line about changing her mind.

She was re-elected in 2014, when the area became Ballincollig-Carrigaline. In 2019, her area was subsumed into the city’s south-east ward with the boundary change.

In June’s election, Ms Forde lost her seat, finishing behind Labour’s Peter Horgan for the last place. Losing “was not entirely surprising”, she says, diplomatically. “I do believe that more thought has to go in, in the future, in placing candidates geographically that’s advantageous, to give each candidate a fair chance.”

Of her five terms as a councillor, the pinnacle remains the year from 2022 to 2023: “It was truly wonderful to be the Lord Mayor of the fantastic people of Cork, what an honour that was.”

Through a charity ball while Lord Mayor, she raised €100,000 for the Special Olympics.

She says she never discriminated against people looking for help, regardless of their politics. “Fine Gael or Sinn Féin or Independent or nothing, if someone asked me for help, I always did my best for them.

“There are small wins and big wins, and I never underestimated the value of small wins. A small win when you have a family on the verge of eviction or who don’t have a home and you can fix them up in some way, or the family with a non-verbal child who are looking for a bit of support, a small win there is the biggest win in the world.”

Ms Forde is a big admirer of people in business — “I would go for 20 elections before I would have the courage to start up my own business, because I would be terrified of losing my livelihood” —and she feels they deserve every support.

“We must always be thinking of new ways to be more efficient and innovative, be that in business or in local authorities or in democracy, and we must support people.”

She is not done with politics yet, and is serving as director of elections for Fine Gael county councillor Úna McCarthy’s Dáil bid in Cork South Central.

“I think she’s great. She’s very accomplished, and she’s a woman who has a different perspective on things, I think she will be a fine addition to Dáil Éireann.”

Ms Forde says that since leaving politics she has trained as a business and life coach. “I’m open to offers, let me just say that, I have a lot of energy and I will be looking to utilise that energy, and if it involves politics or if it involves coaching or if it involves helping organisations, then I will be delighted,” she says.