On the #GE20 Canvass in West Cork: 'Politics makes you hard', says Independent TD Michael Collins

There can't be many occasions when Michael Collins backs away from a meeting with a potential voter, but in this case, he has little choice. After approaching a woman whose car has stopped near the Aldi in Skibbereen, he suddenly recognises the man in the passenger seat. He's the instructor, and she's taking a driving lesson.

"She'll fail the test," he jokes. "She's probably in there nervous as hell and I'm making it worse."

The encounter is the exception as the Schull-based outgoing Independent TD makes his way around the West Cork town on his latest canvass. After topping the poll in successive elections - the 2014 locals and then the 2016 General Election - he is the man to beat in a competitive Cork South West three-seater, a constituency which has its own intricacies and intrigues as polling day draws ever closer

As the man who brought the vote of no confidence in Health Minister Simon Harris, the timing of the election is in some way his doing, but few if any people around Skibbereen are blaming him. Occasionally a car will slow down as it passes and the driver will stretch out a hand.

"Fair play to you, boy," is often the Collins response, home-printed election literature thrust into the hand. "Have a read of the Gospel according to Collins".

One car bearing a Collins election sticker plastered on the side parks on the main street and from it an elderly man with a walking stick and hearing aid emerges. It turns out he is among those set for travel to the North for a cataract operation under the cross-border initiative and instigated by Collins and Kerry Independent TD Danny Healy Rae.

There have been 51 buses that have already made the return trip with mostly elderly passengers on board, more often for cataracts operations.

Health is a major issue here, alongside tourism, rural broadband and farming. Nollaig Harte, who runs the restaurant at the mart, questions Collins about the future of Bantry Hospital. She has had family members treated there in recent years.

"People are looked after really well there," she says. "If you have to go to Cork, the waiting list is ridiculous."

The issues are big and small. John O'Regan from Skibbereen wants Collins to sort out a dodgy footpath. A woman in a shop wants him to get an "umbrella" of trees looked at so people can see if others are walking on the road.

Each issue, along with the name and contact details, is scribbled on a white card, a stack of which are kept in his pocket. "I might get 100 to 150 of these a week," he says.

A worker with the County Council asks him:

"What will you do for our pension? I don't want to be working til I'm 68 or 69, being honest with you." For Collins, it's a "hot potato" and an own goal by government. He's opposed to increasing the pension age and says he'll argue the point if returned to the Dáil. Another man in a nearby house has a more straightforward message: "Fuck Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil out of it."

One elderly woman reveals how her 84-year-old sister got the operation in the North, while Collins says his antipathy towards the government reached its peak when an elderly amputee hauled himself onto one of the specially organised buses recently. "Politics makes you hard," he says, "but after that I said either I'm getting out of politics or Simon Harris is getting out of office."

He says he has no regrets from the past four years, during which time he campaigned against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and was on sticky ground when he commented in 2019 that Ireland should "look after our own people first".

His words were condemned by Labour leader Brendan Howlin, among others. West Cork has by tradition been a welcoming and open place and its one Direct Provision centre has been embraced by locals in Clonakilty.

Since you're as likely to see a Maserati as a Massey Ferguson on some roads around here, what was he getting at? Well, he says, Noel Grealish TD "went into hiding" after making comments in Galway about Direct Provision centres and he believes "proper rural resettlement programmes" are the way forward, criticising Direct Provision for how it treats those in it. "If you go one millimetre offline you are racist," he says of the criticism.

He has 12 teams out today, with the promise of more at weekends, and stresses that he does not take donations, and didn't take a wage increase in the Dáil. "People are doing it from the heart," he says. "I have no funds to give them."

Listening to him as he powers around the town, a few themes emerge: he has lots of time for Simon Coveney ("the only one who was listening" during the efforts to form the last government); less time for outgoing Transport Minister Shane Ross (a "clown"); and an ongoing focus on local and rural issues above all else.

He says he spoke 438 times in his time in Leinster House, and got blowback from some colleagues for his call to close the Dáil bar. "People say to me they don't have a bar at their workplace", he states simply by way of explanation.

Being an independent with a strong focus on local issues, it is arguably easier to gain popularity when the responsibility of government isn't on your shoulders, but Collins shrugs off any notion that he's ignoring bigger issues such as climate change, arguing for fewer cars on the road, better public transport, better roads and reduced or zero VAT on home insulation.

Yet it is the local issues that have seen him top the poll in successive elections and makes him favourite to do so again.

In the course of our walkabout, his mobile phones (he has two) ring at least eight times. No one's asking about Brexit. It's all about hips and knees and buses and the rest.

Collins says if elected he is prepared to sit down and discuss a programme for government with any party, but West Cork must come first. He sums it up in a catchphrase: "Keep it country".