Clare Daly Interview

Forty minutes before I’m due to interview Clare Daly in her office, I bump into the 47-year-old redhead on Duke Street. She’s returning from lunch with fellow Independent TD Mick Wallace. Although she seems happy enough to see me (“Sure, we can just go and do it now”), Wallace is obviously less so. It’s not so much that I’m intruding on a private conversation, more that he remembers me from an earlier encounter.

I interviewed both politicians for Hot Press when they were first elected to the Dáil in 2011. “I never heard the last about that bloody interview,” Wallace complains, grumpily – albeit humorously – shaking his distinctive white mane. “Drugs and prostitution... feck’s sake!” Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to be holding a grudge. As we stroll towards Agriculture House, where some of the Independent TDs have their offices, he fills me in on some of what he suspects about Nama. If even half of it proves to be true, it’s incendiary stuff.
As we’re crossing Kildare Street, a black Mercedes seems to speed up, forcing us to run to the pavement. “Jesus!” Daly exclaims. “That was close!”
It wouldn’t be all that surprising if the Merc driver had intentionally put the pedal to the metal. Whatever about yours truly, there’s no shortage of influential figures in Ireland who’d be more than happy to see the troublesome pair flattened. Alongside the likes of Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins, Paul Murphy and Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, they’ve proved to be serious thorns in the side of the establishment since crash-landing in Leinster House four years ago. When we get to Daly’s office, I note that she has an old Hot Press cover featuring Morrissey pinned to the wall behind her desk. “I put that there especially for you,” she laughs. Actually, as she informed me during our last conversation, she’s a serious Moz fan.
OLAF TYARANSEN: With a week left before the summer recess, what’s the atmosphere like in the Dáil?
CLARE DALY: It’s been a little surreal. In terms of pretty much everything the government does now, the election is on the horizon.
In what way?
Everything is being done with an eye to the election. At the moment, we have a mad rush to cram through legislation, without substantive discussion. Pieces that relate to, for example, the collection of water charges. Trying to bring in repressive measures on the one hand, and then on the other, bills like the Climate Change Bill, which are absolutely necessary. But they’re not getting enough time. It exposes the lack of democracy here. A lot of the debates have been guillotined so everything can get rushed through.
So, are we really heading for an early election?
The number of TDs talking about spending the summer canvassing is quite frightening, actually. We’re supposed to be a national parliament, dealing with issues of national importance.
So when did you last knock on a door?
Ha (laughs). I’m exposing myself now, but it was a while ago. I’ve had public meetings on issues like water charges. We’ve a meeting on Greece next week. We’ve distributed newsletters, we’re available to constituents. I don’t go out every night of the week. If I’m in here for votes, that’s where my job is. I was a councillor for 13 years; my job was to fight on local issues. That’s very important, and I would still link in with that where I can. The role changes, and maybe some people think you haven’t taken up enough of the local issues. Where my role is with the local issues now is where they feed into the national scenario.
What did you make of Brian Cowen’s performance at the banking inquiry?
I didn’t really pay a huge amount of attention. We were stuck in here, on housing stuff, among other matters. Obviously the feedback would be that he brazened it out, and kind of did OK, but lookit, the banking inquiry itself is just a total sham. An absolute waste of time and money. It’s not gonna uncover anything new. The Government thought it was a nice little tactic to maybe kick Fianna Fail, and it’s already demonstrated it’s going to achieve nothing. It’s an absolute waste of space.
Amongst other retired politicians, Cowen and Bertie Ahern are set to get their pensions. Do you think they should accept the extra money?
Of course they shouldn’t! I mean, look at the appalling decimation of people’s living standards, particularly people at the bottom. Obviously I mean that not in a derogatory way, but take for example the lone parent cuts. It has already been vindicated in every independent analysis that lone parents have been the hardest hit by austerity. Now, for those people to see individuals, who are not short of cash, getting a big pay-out at the cost of the exchequer is just horrendous.
It appears that some members of Fine Gael agree with you.
It’s insulting, and a bit rich, to think we’ve had a Fine Gael revolt at the party meeting last night over this. It’s ludicrous. That’s just covering themselves. Of course Cowen and Ahern shouldn’t accept it. But they are perfectly entitled to accept it, thanks to this government’s failure to address the issue.
How do you get on with these guys generally when you bump into them in the corridors?
OK. I know some people would call it Stockholm Syndrome or something. I think it’s important not to be rude to anybody, to treat everybody courteously. I wouldn’t exactly pal around with them. A “hello” would be absolutely fine. Most people are quite pleasant. In our experience the Fianna Failers would generally not present themselves to be anything other than what they are. They can be all things to all men and women, but they are pretty upfront about that, and there’s something, in a warped way, honest about that. I think that Labour are quite sanctimonious. They have a “holier than thou” attitude which means they don’t mix and mingle. Fine Gael would be a bit more mixed.
What about the Shinners?
Sinn Fein just keep to themselves. I like to be pleasant to everyone. These things aren’t personal, but these people have to take personal account for their political decisions. Decisions which in the cases of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour, have caused huge problems for ordinary people, and, you know, you can’t divorce it from that either. There's a huge amount of games played in here, and it is sickening. Those now dominant on the opposition benches previously implemented the policies that they are railing against now. I think a lot of ordinary people are actually paying a lot of attention to what goes on inside the Dáil, and they see through it and say, “This is a joke”.
Even so, many people still vote along traditional lines...
Yes and no. I think that are we on the cusp of something very different here. We’ve seen shake- ups in other countries decimated by austerity, like Greece and Spain. Is Ireland set for a similar shake up politically? We probably are. There probably aren’t enough people in place in constituencies to capitalise on that at the moment. But it’s getting there. Off the back of austerity, people in their droves will desert the Labour Party – people who believed that they represented something different than Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. So they’ll look for another home. Already the Dáil has become more democratic.
How do you mean?
The fact that people like Mick Wallace and Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan are in wearing their ordinary clothes, and behaving as they did before they came in here, and this reverence of “yes deputy, no deputy” being broken down – that has made the Dáil more accessible. My [previous] job was in Aer Lingus, in the catering department. That's a manual background. There are only a handful of people from a manual working background in the Dáil. People’s involvement in politics, through the battle against water charges, is beginning to break that down.
Is that why yourself and Mick Wallace are so friendly?
It was strange for us. You don’t get elected and expect to make friends in a new job. From very early on myself and Mick and Luke, who has very sadly departed us for Europe, hit it off and we had a good way of working together and a similar outlook.
There’s been some media speculation about a romance between yourself and Mick...
Sure the media will talk about anything (laughs). Let them at it, you know?
As a former Aer Lingus worker, what’s your take on the proposed sale of the national airline?
This might sound mad in the context of some of the appalling decisions this present Dáil has made, but the decision to sell the 25% share in Aer Lingus was gut wrenching. I felt utterly sickened, to the pit of my stomach. A huge number contacted this office at that time – one person with terminal cancer rang to say that, in his mind, Aer Lingus was a symbol of Ireland. To hand it over for nothing, to shareholders from the Middle East and European countries who have no affinity to Ireland...
Are you saying it's a bad deal?
The €300 million the State will realise out of the €1.3 billion that the company is valued at is the same as what the exchequer had earned in the
last couple of years from dividends anyway. There’s nothing to be gained from this. Then we hear that IAG, which is not hugely secure financially, is going to fund that purchase with a bridging loan. How are they going to pay that back? They’ll probably access the €1bn in Aer Lingus cash reserves, use that to pay the bank. That’ll be gone and the airline will be undermined, and the thousands of people who work there and their families will be totally exposed. So I was outraged. I am rooting that something is going to mess this up further down the line, and it could. Hopefully it will be scuppered along the way.
Given everything that went wrong in Ireland, are you surprised that it took Irish Water to galvanise the public?
I suppose it affects everybody and, in that sense, it’s the lightning rod for an opposition that people feel on many issues. There’s no doubt that, for the the people we meet on the protests, it’s not just about water, it’s about everything. This government has no mandate for watercharges at all. Labour said they opposed them, Fine Gael said they’d never bring them in unless everywhere was metered. So it doesn’t have a democratic mandate. People see the extra charge being squeezed out of them after years of austerity when they already pay for water through central taxation. The fact is this government is using 18% of our taxes to repay a national debt most of us didn’t benefit from anyway. I think it’s been brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime.
Has social media played a role?
The explosion on social media has been brilliant. There’s a political naivety there: many of these people are turning to politics for the first time. They’ve been shocked to see the role of the Gardaí. They'd have seen the Gardaí as protectors of the community. Then they see the Gardaí mobilised against them. That’s a political education. I don’t think people are protesting just for water. It has been a spark that’s already achieved incredible changes in Irish society; it has already pushed the water charges back hugely. But it’s done a lot more than that. The task is to see if we can build an alternative out of it. Maybe the election is too near.
When do you think the election will be called?
Please god it will be in October or November, but the thinking man’s vote is inching towards February, which is pretty shocking. That would be horrendous if it went that long.
Why so?
This government has not been functioning for the past year. Look at the numbers of TDs who vote on a Wednesday or Thursday. All they care about is getting re-elected. It’s very hard to get change on meaty issues. We need an election and we need it out of the way so we can tackle all these issues – repeal the 8th Amendment, for instance. This government is not going to do that. So let’s get rid of them, move on to all the work that has to be done.
You were heavily involved with the Garda whistle-blowers...
Very early on we were contacted by the Garda whistle-blowers – Maurice McCabe initially, who has become a household name – about the penalty point issue and the termination of penalty points for ‘connected’ people, while ordinary people saw their insurance premiums rise. They would have said that was the biggest issue for the guards, but it wasn’t. It was a little bit like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. It was one where you could show where there was interference and malpractice, and that gave you the platform to point to the more important areas of malpractice. We’ve been connected to people the length and the breadth of the country every day by this.
What kind of people?
People whose life’s circumstances put themselves in the way of the guards, ordinary people going about their ordinary business. It could be something like a family member who was killed in tragic circumstances not being investigated. It could be living next to somebody who is connected, and there might be a land dispute or a planning application dispute. They could be fitted up for anything – and their whole life then takes a different tack. The stories we have heard, and the families that we have been involved with at the hands of Garda malpractice, has been quite shocking – beyond what I would ever have dreamed.
What exactly happened with your ‘drink driving’ incident?
When we were highlighting the penalty points claims originally, I was on the southside of Dublin one night. I’m proud to say I have a very limited knowledge of the southside of Dublin (laughs) – I’m from Kildare and I’ve lived on the northside since I came to Dublin. I took a wrong turn and there was a Garda car coming up the road. When they pulled up, they saw it was me and decided to test me for drink driving. I had never done a breathalyser before; I had a cold at the time. The issue is that the information was leaked within 24 hours to the media – “TD arrested”. I hadn’t even had time to tell my family or the girls in the office, which is horrible when you get a call at half- four from RTE saying, “This is David McCullough, I’m really sorry but we’re running with the story in half an hour.” So I just went out and told the truth.
You had taken a drink, hadn’t you?
I had taken hot whiskey for the cold and didn’t know what the result would come back as. People understood very quickly: ‘why is this even on the news?’ It wasn’t as if I had done something, or I was behaving erratically or anything like that. They decided to have a bit of fun, I think, with the leaking of the story. The mad thing about that is that it was two-and-a-half years ago – and the GSOC investigation is still not concluded. The Kieran Boylan informant handling, drug-running GSOC investigation, which was the talk of the country, went on for four years – so I’m thinking I’m on target to beat that over a simple issue, which is just beyond belief. This is a countrywide problem. This is an undisciplined organisation, and keeping the hierarchy in place is not going to change it.
What will change it?
It needs a root and branch review to clear them out. All they’ve done is change the faces at the top. We believe in some ways the new Minister is a block on progress and even worse than the old one. The new Minister and new Commissioner may look better and sound better and more polished. In fact the regime is exactly how it was. There’s probably less appetite for reform now, and that’s just not good enough. We’ll work with people who are victims of injustice, and certain gardaí themselves who are at the receiving end of this. We’re not gonna let that lie.
Yourself and Mick Wallace got arrested for trespassing at Shannon Airport last year...
We did, we’ll be going back soon. Yeah, lookit, that was almost a year ago now, it was when the Dáil went into recess last summer. Since our election, we work on a regular basis with the activists in Shannon Watch. We, between us, have tabled over 100 parliamentary questions to the four ministers involved – Justice, Defence, Transport and Foreign Affairs – asking why our neutrality was being breached, asking to search the planes. We had been to London, we had met Julian Assange in the embassy and talked to him about the WikiLeaks cables.
Did you meet Assange face-to-face?
Yeah. We went over when he had only been there for a year. Sadly, he’s there three years now. It’s absolutely scandalous and we’ve raised that with the ministers here, but they don’t seem to care – no more than they care about Edward Snowden and all the rest of them either. But we discussed when we were in the embassy with Assange how the WikiLeaks case impacted on Ireland and it’s quite clear, when you read the leaked documents, the Americans consider Ireland part of the Coalition of the Willing. They were thanking the Irish government for its role. We knew what Dermot Ahern, who was the Minister at the time, was saying behind the scenes. It’s absolutely clear that they were part of this coalition, and the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, and two-and-a-half million US troops have transited though Shannon. When we raised these questions we were told, “Oh no, military aircraft are only allowed through Shannon if they’re not carrying arms or involved in any exercise.” What the hell else are they doing then, if there’s that volume of them? Nothing else makes any sense.
So why did you decide to trespass?
We were following in the footsteps of Margareta D’Arcy and Niall Farrell, who went onto the runway and had been imprisoned. We had raised the issue many times. And Alan Shatter, in a very direct way, said, “So you’re saying that arms are there and, if you can find us the evidence, of course we’ll consider that but we’ve no reason to believe that this is the case”. And we said, “Sure, how do you know if you don’t search?” And they said, “If you have the evidence, we’ll take this seriously because they’re not supposed to be doing this.” Anyway that’s why we went down. We didn’t get very far.
What kind of things came up?
There was incredible testimony given, including from the military correspondent with the Irish Times, who played for the court recordings of being on a US aircraft that landed in Shannon with the main sergeant or whatever announcing to the troops to leave their guns on their seats when they went into the Duty Free. We had an airport worker who worked in a catering company talking about seeing guns on the flights on
a repeated basis, and we had a man give testimony who was actually questioned for 48 hours for stealing a gun, but that case obviously never progressed because how could you steal a gun off a plane if there are no guns on the planes? This man had been a former Irish army soldier, he’d served on the border and in the Middle East, and knew his weapons very well, and was able to give testimony of the exact type of weaponry which he repeatedly saw on that aircraft. Yet we’re to believe they don’t carry weapons? We should be searching those planes; it’s just not on. We are complicit now.
With what effect?
Look at the tragic deaths of the three Irish people in Tunisia a couple of weeks ago. We know that the gunman targeted Westerners because to him they were complicit in the destruction of the Middle East and this is what has happened. We are complicit. Irish people love when they go on holidays and people say, “Are you English?” and they nearly jump down people’s throat and say, “How dare you! We’re not English, we’re Irish and proud of it!”, and everyone goes, “Oh we love the Irish!” Well, not anymore. There are people in the Middle East who know that Ireland is playing
a role in this, and that makes it unsafe for our peacekeepers who operate in the UN, and for our citizens who work in Shannon, and for people who go on holidays.
We’ve also been complicit in the economic bullying of Greece. What do you make of the Government’s behaviour in recent weeks?
It’s shameless. It’s embarrassing for everybody. Quite clearly, it would expose the Government’s lack of action if Greece was to succeed. So rather than looking at this idea of international solidarity – we’re all in this together – they’ve decided they’re like the little fella in the class who sees the weak kid getting picked on. And he’s delighted, putting the boot in to curry favour with the teacher. It’s sickening beyond belief and what’s worse about it is that they must know that the remedy that was being foisted on Greece is not going to cure the patient, it’s going to kill them.
Is there anything this government is getting right?
Em... (long pause). You’ll have to jolt my memory because I can’t actually think of anything. I’m trying hard. They will try and hide behind the same- sex marriage referendum and claim the credit for that. Let’s be clear, that was 10 years hard work by people in the lesbian and gay community. I think it has jolted the government into realising Ireland isn’t the place it was in the '70s or '80s, and that it’s a new country with a greater level of tolerance. They genuinely got a kick out of it as well.
What’s your take on the ‘Turn Off The Red Light’ campaign?
I find it very peculiar that any viewpoint could be so definite. I find, in my experience,
that anybody who offers an alternative viewpoint is castigated as somebody who is almost in favour of the subjugation and exploitation of women, which is bizarre. So I’m not sure how that campaign originated or how it got the level of organisation that it got to back it.
The issoe of payment for sex shouldn’t be anybody else’s business...
I find it incredible that if you try to have a balanced discussion about this you’re literally vilified as somebody who is anti-women. I don’t accept that, absolutely not. Prohibition never works anyway. I’m fully in favour of assisting women who want to engage in a different path, to support them and so on. But if somebody says to me, ‘Listen, if I can get money for this rather than whatever'. All work is exploitation.
If prohibition never works, how do you feel about the legalisation of drugs?
Thanks to Luke, we did have at least one debate here in the lifetime of this Dáil. I think there were eight of us who supported Luke, which is pretty low, on the idea of legalising cannabis. And I think some of the many, many Irish citizens who use cannabis on a regular basis might’ve been disappointed with that result, because it’s
out of sync massively with the reality. However, the fact that we discussed it, and that those issues were raised and aired, it’s a first step on what is an inevitable road. We will legalise cannabis in this country. We have to. It’s a normal part of life for a lot of people. And bear in mind I have no interest in taking drugs. I don’t advocate that people would do that, necessarily, but I recognise that it’s a reality and the idea of criminalising – why wouldn’t the taxpayer benefit from the taxation of the product, the VAT on it or whatever? Why wouldn’t the consumer benefit from a regulated market where they knew what they were buying was safe? It makes perfect sense, you know?
What about legalising harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin?
I’m open to that. It’s more complicated because they are potentially more harmful. I’m probably not equipped enough to adjudicate on that. I’ve seen the harm that drugs can do. I also believe that people can make informed choices. That’s a much better way of dealing with it than outlawing substances. We need to have that debate. I’d be maybe a little bit more wary on that, but yeah, I wouldn’t rule it out.
Mick Wallace has raised some serious concerns about Nama recently. I presume you know the full story?
It’s absolutely massive, the whole Nama situation. I suppose we have to see it in the context. We have debates in the parliament all the time and they kinda go, “Oh, where’ll you get the money for this?” and we have to do these cuts because the economy is struggling. And then you see billions [being wasted]. Like, you take the Northern Ireland Project Eagle and you got a portfolio which is in the media at the moment. The idea that they couldn’t have gotten an extra billion, for example, from that is just ludicrous. Of course they could. So what does that mean? Well, it means a bloody lot to the people that are homeless tonight or the lone parents. If they'd sold it properly, the taxpayer would’ve gotten an awful lot of money out of it. So lookit, it’s another notch in the sort of exposé of the type of society that we have and the connections – it’s a little bit similar to the Guards in that it’s kinda who you know,
it’s people feathering their own nest. The lack of accountability and transparency with the public purse? This story is only starting. This will make the banking inquiry look like a walk in the park. This is even bigger – it’s horrendous.
Do you think your seat is safe in the next election?
Well, I think it’d be very arrogant of anybody to say they’re safe. I’m prepared to accept whatever verdict the electorate come up with. I suppose I’m fortunate that we’ve gained an extra seat in the constituency that I’m in – a huge part of which is an area that was taken from me before (laughs). I’m the only opposition TD there: there's three government people... so you have to do the maths. It will be a bit of a shock. Look, I don’t know. But I’m prepared to stand by my record. If people don’t want me to be their TD, I can live with that. I can do plenty of other things. I’m okay with that. But yeah, I will stand again this time. I think I should be returned. I hope.