8 Questions for John Gormley

What are three things you can’t live without?

Food, my iPhone and, let me see, the last one, I suppose I’m addicted to watching rugby on TV.... if I was to be really gooey now, I’d say my family, throw in the family.

What’s your motto/advice that you live by?

EF Schumacher (chief economist at Britain’s national coal board, and one of the first people to highlight resource depletion as a threat to industrialisation) said: “We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we’ll be successful, because if we don’t do the right thing, we’ll be doing the wrong thing and we’ll become part of the disease and not part of the cure.”

Why did you become a politician?

I was really a campaigner to begin with and I just became a politician by default really. They couldn’t get anyone else to stand in the constituency and I stood and I did well, it wasn’t planned.

Ten years from now where will you be…

Ten years from now, you know what, I have no idea, because I never have any idea what’s going to be ... if people had asked me five years ago would I have been a minister I would have said “That’s a crazy idea”. So I really don’t know.

Name four guests for your ideal dinner party?

Do they all have to be alive or can some of them be dead? ... em ... John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi ... it would be an interesting party ... let me see ... who else would be interesting .... (very long pause) .... let me see ... I’d bring ... Trevor Sargent and Dan Boyle.

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading, it’s a book called “Make it Stick,” I think, I downloaded it onto my iPad, it’s about ideas that resonate with people, and, eh, I’m reading as well Best American Short Stories, at the same time.

What keeps you awake at night?

What keeps me awake at night? ... not too much ... but I did have a few sleepless nights when the IMF came in.

What is your funniest political memory?

My funniest political memory would be I suppose when I entered government first, I eh, there was a breakfast and I assumed that there was a breakfast that took place and I assumed it was the Cabinet breakfast but I discovered that it was a Fianna Fáil meeting. I was sitting down there and none of them told me, they were too embarrassed to tell me, and I was sitting there, they were all eating and I was helping myself as well. Eventually I twigged it myself when I absented myself. That would have been my first day in Government.