Mary Lou: ’It's just not good enough - in the Taoiseach's city'

“I’m an Irish mammy, I’m very practical, I’m about getting stuff done,” Mary Lou McDonald told The Echo. It’s a line the Sinn Féin leader often uses, and it seems to reflect a conscious branding decision on her part.

We spoke in the Lough Business Park office of Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central, and Ms McDonald had earlier met with tenants in the dilapidated, 60-year-old social housing flats on Clashduv Rd.

Residents there, in common with tenants in flats of a similar vintage in places like Noonan’s Rd, Cherry Tree Rd and Baker’s Rd, have been complaining for years about crumbling masonry, mould, damp, and regular rodent infestation.

Ms McDonald clearly hit it off with the tenants as they showed her around their homes.

“It’s not good enough, you’re doing your bit, you’re paying your rent, and the State and the council is failing, and not good enough in the Taoiseach’s home city,” she told them.

“He never stops talking about Cork. Well he’s not talking about this Cork, I want to hear from Micheál Martin about this Cork.” 

Later, Ms McDonald praised the community in the area, saying the women she had met took great pride in their homes and their families.

“They’re just at their wits’ end, because they’re just not being heard,” she said.

“I deal with flat complexes in my own constituency, so I know the story from start to finish. So here’s what I think: I think when people pay their rent, the State, the council, has a duty of care to them, and it is very clear to me that that duty of care is not being met in these homes for these families.

“The idea that you have to wash mould from your walls, the fact that the frames on your doors come away, the fact that the insulation on the windows is so primitive that you’re looking at heating bills in January in €500 and €600, all of that speaks of failure.” 

That “all of these stories have been told and told” in local media only made it worse, she said.

“It seems to be that here in Cork there is a belief among some that you can get away with having tenants living in circumstances like that.

“It’s not acceptable, is my first observation, it has to change, is my second, and the third thing is that it has to be a partnership between the local authority and central government. The local authority have to lift their game significantly, and central government have to make the funding available to make that possible.” 

Looking more broadly at the issue of housing, Ms McDonald said that a growing phenomenon involved families going from private rental accommodation into homelessness.

“Every month, the figures come out. Like, what’s happened to our country, where it’s literally now just part of the political calendar that, on a given Friday on a month, what will be the (homelessness) number? It climbs and climbs and climbs.

“That’s not the Ireland we grew up in," she said.

"I’m not pretending for a moment things were perfect and rosy, the country was a lot poorer in those times but we didn’t have that, and we have it now when the State has never been wealthier.”

Turning to local politics, any fair analysis would surely say that Sinn Féin has two strong TDs in Cork city, one on either side of the river, and a very capable team on Cork City Council. 

However, at last summer’s local elections, the party elected Michelle Gould in the north-west ward, but only at the expense of Mick Nugent in the same area. In November’s general election, both city TDs dropped about a third of their first preferences, with neither returning a running mate.

Asked where it went wrong for Sinn Féin, Ms McDonald accepted that the party had made mistakes.

“We had some missteps, and we’ve talked very openly about that within the party.

“I would be the first to say that not getting into government this time is a disappointment for us. I was down with the community in Togher, and I’m really disappointed that I can’t come, that Donnchadh and Tommy (Gould) can’t come, with the authority of government, saying ‘Right, how do we fix this now, how do we make this better?’” 

It was, she admitted, in some ways, a disappointing election for Sinn Féin, despite returning more TDs and seanadóirí, but her party should have done better.

“Where did it go wrong? Just the political mood changed,” she said.

“You may have noticed since the election, there has been a greater emphasis, from Sinn Féin in particular, because we lead the opposition, but I think from the other opposition parties as well, to come together in common cause and to demonstrate practically us working together, offering solutions, voicing the views, sometimes the frustrations, sometimes the hopes and aspirations of the people that we represent.

“Remember the last general election was the lowest turn-out ever in a general election. That’s telling you something about Irish politics, about activism, and we listen very carefully to those messages from the electorate, and I want us to get it right.” 

In presenting itself as a credible alternative party of government, did Sinn Féin lose sight of its job as a party of opposition and of holding the government to account?

“Well, yeah, the view of the electorate is that’s what happened. Politics is about lots of things, and above all else it’s about striking balances between things, so we had, and still have, in my opinion, a responsibility to be prepared.

“So that, if you’re in government next week or next month or next year, you’re not flapping around. You have to make those preparations, you have to do all that.

“But the counterbalance is that when you are in opposition, you are in opposition, and it is very clear that what the people want is an opposition that is staunch, that is firm, that is pretty relentless.

“So, there’s no confusion now, we lead the opposition, and we made very clear as a party, and myself as leader, that in this Dáil we are hauling this government over the coals and we will hold them to account with a firmness like they have never seen, for the simple reason that Fine Gael has now been in government 14 years, Fianna Fáil in some guise or another, confidence and supply, coalition, for 10 years or so,” Ms McDonald said.

“Every election you learn something. Our job is to represent people, to make life better for people, to be connected with people, and the ultimate way that we will achieve those objectives is by Sinn Féin entering government, and that remains our firm objective and we’re going to work very, very hard.

“Where we have lessons to learn we will learn them.” 

Asked about the Cork Luas, Ms McDonald said such projects should not be done piecemeal, noting the lack of a rail link to Dublin Airport, and the fact that none is planned immediately in Cork either.

“When you’re planning a big infrastructural project like that, think it fully through. Don’t half do things. Think it fully through.

“And then the issues around planning, around procurement, around all of those things, need to be properly resourced, need to be revamped, because there is an issue of pace in terms of delivery of infrastructural projects in Ireland,” she said.

“And here’s the thing that riles me: it’d be one thing if we were very slow, but we were very exacting, like we were watching every shilling, but it seems to me we have the worst of both worlds. We’re really, really slow and we’re really, really expensive, like well over budget.” 

Asked where next for Sinn Féin, Ms McDonald said that although the party had yet to achieve government in the 26 counties, it had ensured that if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael wanted to go into government, they had to do so together.

“If you had said 10 years ago that we would be there, you would have said no, that’s not conceivable. I think we’ve proven in this State how profoundly things can change, that policies can evolve, and that we can move things forward.

“In the North, we have unquestionably changed the political model fundamentally there with Michelle (O’Neill) in there as first minister, and with the change, not just in the demographics but in the atmosphere in northern politics.

“We didn’t get into government [here] this time, but we’ve achieved big things and we can achieve bigger things and I am very hopeful that after the next general election I can come to Cork and have Sinn Féin ministers.” 

Does she want to be taoiseach?

“I’m not a person who is a crazed careerist, that’s not really how I operate, because big jobs mean big workloads. 

"Like it’s a lot. The job I currently have is 24/7, go, go, go.

“But I think we’re ready for it, and I’m ready for it, and what we need now is to win the confidence of the people in Cork and beyond, that we can do it, that we can actually deliver, that we can deliver government that is more responsive, more efficient, more connected, and critically, government that doesn’t - so casually - just leave entire communities behind.

“So we need to make that case, and we need to win that case and win the hearts and minds of people.” 

A spokesperson for Cork City Council said it was “misleading” to say it was failing in its duty of care, saying it was “always actively working to uphold its duty of care to all tenants”.

“Cork City Council does not ignore the needs of its tenants and remains fully committed to engaging with tenants and addressing concerns,” they said, adding that the council operated “a responsive maintenance system to address urgent repairs”.

“The flat complexes referred to, across the city, are of significant age, and presenting with maintenance works that are to be expected of properties of this nature. The proposed regeneration of the Noonan Road and surrounding flat complexes is being treated with priority by Cork City Council, with a strong stakeholder engagement process underway and progressing well,” they added.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin was also asked for comment.