This is a quite different political autobiography. Most focus on the achievements of the office holder (often exaggerating their personal involvement and positioning them at the centre of significant political events). This book tells of ambition and failure culminating in bursting into tears in Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s office.
Eoghan Murphy was the controversial Fine Gael housing minister in the 2016 to 2020 government. This was the government supported through a confidence and supply agreement by Fianna Fáil. He had been involved in Leo’s campaign for the leadership and along with Simon Harris was one of the “choirboys” at the heart of the Fine Gael cabinet.
Murphy reveals he had no overriding pollical philosophy regarding housing provision. He ruled nothing in or out and on taking office spent time talking to opposition politicians and housing experts in seeking solutions. He did not rule out the state building its own housing stock (though Local Authorities had outsourced this to the private sector a decade earlier and many Chief Executives resisted the idea of bringing it back).
Some ideas worked such as the Land Development Agency, but others failed such as co-living. The homeless figures rose inexorably often illogically getting worse even when temporary housing solutions were implemented. Murphy became a hate figure seeming to be out of touch and elusive and although he accepts blame for some things going wrong, his assertions that the system worked against him have a ring of truth about them. Poor delivery is a focus of the current general election campaign and Murphy suffered the same. He often found that even when the finance for schemes was passed in government (with Paschal Donohoe giving the nod) the money didn’t come through to the Department of Housing for a long time. He also found the civil service (who he refers to as the “permanent government”) stopped work on projects if they thought the cabinet was going to change tack or the minister was getting moved on. Local authorities also failed to deliver even when the money came through. Some, he observes, are run as fiefdoms by their Chief Executives with little effective scrutiny from Councillors.
Murphy’s route into politics (unhelpfully the timeline of the book jumps back and forward in successive chapters) was very odd. He had a good job at the UN in Geneva monitoring nuclear weapons testing but returned to Dublin to seek a route into politics to effect “great change”. He assembled a team of workers even before he’d chosen a party to join. He ended up in Fine Gael after a chance encounter in a bar with Enda Kenny. This team worked flat out to get him elected to Dublin City Council in 2009 and only two years later into the Dáil. He topped the poll in the new seat of Dublin Bay South in 2016 and became a junior minister. When Enda Kenny stepped down, Leo Varadkar made him housing minister in 2017.
The job got to Murphy and his coping mechanisms involved heavy drinking and bouts of running flat out in the rain. He had emotional support from his brothers, who include the distinguished actor Killian Scott (Love-Hate, Dublin Murders). He needed lots of sleeping pills and signed on with several GPs as one alone wouldn’t give him enough! There’s even sex in the book – he picks up a woman in bar and asks her to be discrete when she leaves the following morning.
Murphy had already decided to leave politics and contested the 2020 election only to avoid difficulties for the party. He was a back bencher for two years and on leaving politics, Fine Gael failed to hold his seat in the subsequent byelection with the now labour leader Ivana Bacik taking it in 2021.
On leaving politics Murphy returned to international affairs and is an election observer, most recently heading the observer mission in Georgia (the country not the state).
A very enjoyable, witty, and revealing political read that is rightly the top selling paperback on the nonfiction list in Ireland this week.
“Running from Office” by Eoghan Murphy is published by “eriu” books and is available from Amazon and all good book shops.
After a career of 27 years in railway management and 7 as a Non Exec NHS Trust Director, 2 of them as Vice Chair of Manchester Mental Health, Harper retired to West Donegal with his husband and two cats to grow fruit and veg. A former member of the GB Labour Party he served as a County Councillor and a Parliamentary candidate. He is a member and canvasser for Alliance but writes in a personal capacity.
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