The nomination process for the upcoming presidential election has got as much coverage in the papers and the airwaves as most of the candidates over the past few months. One of the first to set his stall out and get into the race is the Fine Gael nominee Gay Mitchell. The former minister of state and current MEP for Dublin threw his hat in the ring early in the summer and has been on the campaign trail since. It has been a different kind of campaign for the Dubliner who has been more used to the metropolitan hustings than the more rural agricultural type of campaigning that the national contest had in store for him.
“To get the nomination I had to do a national tour, meet the councillors in Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim, and all that. Then I got the nomination, it was the first time we had a college of TDs, councillors, and the party executive. The day I got the nomination, the chief whip Paul Keogh said, ‘Gay, there is a farmers’ show in Duncormack in Wexford on a Wednesday, don’t miss it,’ and I went. From that day I have been everywhere.”
Making the decision to run for the presidency was something that happened pretty quickly, Mitchell admitted, and it came about because the only other person he wanted to enter the race decided against running, he told the Mayo Advertiser this week, during a break from the campaign in Castlebar on Monday. “It all happened on June 4, it was my wedding anniversary and I was at a wedding in Donegal. I had been hoping that John Bruton would run. John and I come from different backgrounds and we share a certain philosophy, an ethos. I believe in enterprise, social justice, rights and responsibilities. An ethos that says not only do you have rights but you have responsibilities for yourself and others that go with those rights. And if you want social justice for everybody, which I do for everybody, you have got to create the wealth to provide social services and education and health services, and I believe in those four pillars if you like. There was no other candidate looking for the nomination who held those strong views apart from John Bruton. John was not going and I was happy in Europe, I liked the work there. I was the head of the Fine Gael delegation, sat on the economic and monetary affairs committee. I had a real role there.”
Rights and responsibilities
While he is happy in the European Parliament and enjoyed the work he was doing there, when he was asked about the possibility of entering the race Mitchell said it did not take long for him to decide to give it a go. “At the wedding there were a lot of Fine Gael people there, TDs, ministers, former TDs who said, why aren’t you running? Then I took soundings and I spoke to people and said, what do you think? And they came back to me saying, I was going to ring you about that. So I decided I would go.
“If you look at the Proclamation, we all remember from school that it spoke about equality of opportunity and all that. But it spoke about prosperity and happiness. But at the height of our prosperity, we didn’t have happiness. Look at the number of young people who were taking their own lives. I believe in prosperity and happiness, and if we say to ourselves, look next time we create this wealth we’re going to create and fund public services properly. My mother grew up in comfortable circumstances, my parents had seven children and adopted two more children. Then at the age of 47 my mother was widowed and I was five. My mother had to go clean offices at four in the morning and then get us out to school. She never thought she would see that day, so when I talk about social justice I’m not talking about somebody else. I want to know what is going to happen my kids, it should be there for all of us. A safety net, and the way to do that is to encourage the enterprising spirit, not to create the wealth so we have more wealth and more yachts and cars. We need to be more prosperous and happy, and the Proclamation says that and I believe I have the sense of direction to lead us there.”
The welfare of the people
Ensuring the welfare of all the people in the country is taken care of is something that Mitchell believes very strongly in, and facing down the issues that are affecting society as a whole is something he hopes to do. One of the major issues Mitchell wants to see a lot of work done on is suicide prevention. “In the area of the welfare of the people, the President is on his or her own and I want to make a major issue of why Ireland has now such a high rate of suicide compared to what we had before. I want to make the issue, not what is she doing about that or he doing about that? I want it to be, what are we going to do about that? I was speaking to the Minister for Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald about this a few weeks ago, and she said, Yes you’re right to do this, and President McAleese has already started some work on this. Now, I didn’t know that and I would hope at some stage to be able to address the Dáil and say, “Look, let’s make 2016 the target year to make Ireland not just a more prosperous country but a happier country, and have come to terms with the suicide issue in the country, to find out what is behind the suicide issue. It was described to me, by a councillor whose son took his own life, as being in a very dark room where there was no door. We’ve got to try and find that door. I think that there is a despair for some people and they feel left out.”
An inclusive president
Mitchell also sees himself as being an all inclusive president if he manages to win October’s election. “Some people believe inclusiveness is about being politically correct at the time, but inclusiveness is like being pregnant, you can’t be a bit pregnant. You either are or you’re not. I think there are a lot of people who feel that they don’t fit into the fad of the day and that can contribute to alienation.
“What I’m saying is, and I’ve said it time and time again as clearly as I can, if I become president Catholics will be welcome in Áras an Uachtaráin, so will Protestants of all denominations, Jewish people, and Muslims. I don’t care what your father did, what the colour of your skin is, or whether you are gay or straight. I want to be a really inclusive president. Now that doesn’t mean I can be all things to all people, but I feel that being inclusive is a place to start, so we can say to people, if you’re feeling in despair, look, we’re all in this together.”
Bringing home experience
Being out of the glare of national politics for the past seven years is something the Dubliner believes will be of benefit for him, along with his experience, when people come to cast their vote. “In a way that’s a strength and a weakness. That took me away from the adversarial politics and out of the media a bit. That has its strengths in this particular contest, because there are a lot of people outside of Fine Gael who look at what I say and stand for and might vote for me. Like on this occasion, I’m asking Fianna Fáil people to lend me your vote. Let them look at what I stand for, look at what I have done and am saying, and I think they will see that I am the candidate nearest their way of thinking. The fact that I have not been involved in adversarial politics in seven years probably would make it easier for them to do so. In Dublin I usually run ahead of the party vote, which means I attract other votes from elsewhere.”
