Eoghan Murphy Interview: Fever To Reform

"Every day has been cold, wet and windy," coughs Eoghan Murphy. "The guys in the West are getting it worse, but it's not pleasant here either. I'll have to ask for the next election to be held in August."
For the Dublin South-East TD, contesting his second election, the chances of calling the shots on dissolving the next Dáil may be limited, but he's got a knack for rocking the boat. As a member of Fine Gael's rebellious 'five-a-side' club, the 33-year-old has been a consistent campaigner for reform in everything from the party whip system to electoral constituencies - but the early part of this year has been taken up with campaigning of a very different nature.
"It's go, go, go," he explains. "You're not eating well, not sleeping much, not getting any exercise - and then there are the nerves. Because it's my second run at the Dáil, it's a different sort of election. You're trying to build a vote previously built up, so I'm more nervous about that."
And while there's a WhatsApp group in which the younger TDs share their thoughts and fears - yes, we found that hilarious too; and no, we didn't get to see it - his youth gives Murphy another keen advantage. He's one of the relatively few parliamentarians who can truly understand and relate to the young, middle class Irish - both here and further afield.
"I left UCD in 2004, and chose to go away," says the man whose work in international arms control brought him to London, Vienna and Geneva before he returned to the capital. "A lot of my crowd did that. But, now in their early thirties, there's a lot of people looking to come back. One of my friends came back, with a nice salary from an American company. But he didn't realise how difficult taxes would make it here, and he was gone again. There's lots of stories like that."
That's part of the reason why the phasing out of the highly-divisive Universal Social Charge (USC) is barely a debate in his mind. Citing a belief that lost revenue will be balanced out through Michael Noonan's proposed clawbacks, he sees it as the strongest way to generate revenue through productivity rather than taxation, even at a time when investment in areas such as healthcare is so sorely needed.
"We invested around an additional €800 million in health for this year, and that's at a time where we're actually lowering taxes," he says. "By creating more jobs, and investment in the economy, we're getting more tax revenue to invest in services. Right now our tax reductions are seeing an increase in the tax take - so it's working."
Unfortunately, government coffers are not the only place where increases are happening. As a renter himself, he understands that escalating rents are a real issue.
"Trying to control rent might be the wrong way to go about it," he states. "What we have is an absence of private rented property, and rent controls will scare those people out of the market even more. It's a problem for me and my girlfriend, where we have a high rent to pay so we're not saving anything - and when you talk about one day buying, that's not going to be possible now. But you look at a place like Geneva - something like 75 per cent of people are renters, long-term. I think that might be a new reality, for Dublin in particular."
Swiss renters probably haven't been faced the frequent price-gouging that have hit renters here.
"People talk to me about rent certainty - being able to rent longer term with security for 10 years - and we need to find that. Unfortunately, in the last six months of 2015, there was a lot of confusion about what the government was doing in the rental sector. I don't think the Minister for the Environment helped, in terms of different ideas being floated but not acted on."
So if Fine Gael find themselves in government once again?
"We have to build more houses, because there's a supply issue. That can't happen overnight. We've got to try and find a method to do that. But when you look at the legacy issues - no building at all really in Dublin for seven years, no social housing for 17 years - we're really coming from far behind."
Does that mean social housing is back on the table?
"There are merits and demerits to social housing," he says. "But no change in rent allowance for private housing is going to solve the problem."
The building guidelines are another issue.
"If the guidelines change in terms of standards, that will help. I recently did Airbnb in Florence, in a perfect apartment in the heart of the city, that you'd never be allowed to build under Dublin's guidelines. You've got to find a balance, with the flexibility to say 'there isn't parking for every apartment in this block, but that's okay', or 'the ceilings are a tiny bit low, but this is going to be short-term letting to students coming in every six months'. People think 'they're going to make every apartment 30sqm, which is nonsense. But we need to make it profitable for people to build."
While taxation, healthcare and housing are perennial election issues, the repeal of the Eighth Amendment is a newer topic.
"I wouldn't say it's a major issue," he reports. "For some, it's an issue because they've had that experience, or have had a difficulty with a pregnancy. It's not coming up on every second door though."
At least some of that, though, might be down to the fact that Eoghan pinned his colours to the mast a while ago.
"I'd like to see a repeal of the Eighth. I don't know what the end of Enda Kenny's process will be, but I'd imagine that it's going to be a referendum - and I'll be campaigning actively. We need to do something, because we're outsourcing the problem to the UK and that's a dereliction of duty. We're failing our citizens by not providing that healthcare for women."
The abortion issue has been instructive in separating party stances: Fianna Fáil are against the repeal, while Labour have made its repeal a clear target. So who are Eoghan's ideal coalition partners?
"I have reservations about all of them," he laughs. "But you'd have to recognise that Labour have done a good job with us in government. You look at the Marriage Equality Referendum: Enda Kenny and Fine Gael did a huge amount of work, but it wouldn't necessarily have been on the table without Labour pushing for it for so long. When I go out canvassing, a lot of people are saying the government has done a good job. I think it would be good to have a partner like Labour there with us for the next five years."