Hazel Chu using 'different' to her advantage in Lord Mayor role
When the new Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu is asked to sum up her role, she replies: "Surreal."
The Green Party councillor is the eighth woman, and first person of colour, to hold the role and says she will be using the fact she's "different" to her advantage.
"I had lunch with Neasa (Hourigan, Green Party TD) and we were laughing about it," she says.
"I think if you told either one of us two years ago, she'll be a TD and I'll be Lord mayor, we would have laughed at you.
"I didn't think I'd be in this position so it's been amazing, but it is surreal because the whole thing is different now.
"The mayor normally went to 10 events a day previously, now all the events are gone because of Covid-19, but it means on the upside, I get to tie in with the policy and council stuff and go nag the officials, which they hate.
"It means I get to do my job, normally but they stack it with so many events that mayors are just there to open the envelope side of things."
The role, which Chu will hold for a year, comes with impressive digs, and she, along with her partner Green Party TD Patrick Costello ("Cosi" to friends and family), and their two-year-old daughter Alex have "half-moved" into the mayor's residence, The Mansion House on Dawson Street.
"I had to lug her pram up the stairs into my office," she said.
"They don't warn you that its massive here, it's definitely not built for prams."
Politics didn't feature in the Chu household, and the mayor credits her husband for her introduction to public service.
"I came from a family that was nine of us in a three-bedroom house and my mom and dad worked two jobs so they could barely put food on the table, never mind politics, and mainly because they don't speak the language, they just weren't involved.
"It wasn't until I met Cosi, because he had been a social worker, he had been working in homeless shelters and drug addiction centres and one day he said: 'Enough of this. I'm gonna try to work from a policy side to see if I can help,' because he felt like it needed change from the inside.
"I said: 'Okay, if this is what you want to do, I'll help you get there' because I knew I was good at organising, I managed this campaign.
"It was then that I got involved in the Greens because I saw what the party was like, there were people who made me think: 'This is a good party, it seems to care about people like my parents but at the same time it will help the environment'."
Chu has hit the ground running, and wants to use the new-found way of working in her role to her advantage.
"I want to make sure that we highlight the community work that we do as a city and see about bringing people along and make sure they know well the Mansion House once it's open again, it's your house to come in.
"I'm setting up a task force on homelessness. Previously there were things like the Lord Mayor forums on homelessness, but they become a bit of a talking shop, whereas I guess I come from a corporate space and I don't want that.
"It's important to me that the role is to actually do something concrete.
"The first few months will be on housing, and then social inclusion, fighting racism and promoting diversity."
Fighting racism is close to Chu's heart.
She has publicly spoken out about her experiences of racial abuse, and says people mentioning her heritage is "unavoidable".
"It hasn't escaped me, mainly because, well, I am the first person of colour to be in the role," she said.
"My PA has been PA to two or three Lord Mayors, and said she'd never seen this amount of interview requests.
"When someone asked her why did she think that was, she kind of just looked at me, and I had to cut in and say 'You're okay to say it's because I'm different'.
-What do Lord Mayors do?
— Hazel Chu (@hazechu) July 2, 2020
-Who was the first female Lord Mayor?
-How many Lord Mayors do we have in the country?
-What are my plans for the year?
-Who do I thank?
Answering all the above and more in my first & hopefully not last (homemade) video as the @LordMayorDublin pic.twitter.com/Da46AEC7Ir
"You can't really avoid it, so you use it to your advantage."
A former barrister, Chu says she has earned her work ethic from parents who both emigrated to Ireland from Hong Kong.
She is currently chair of the Green Party and her previous roles include MS Ireland and crisis management for drinks industry giant Diageo, a role which she says primed her for a life in politics.
"My parents had like two jobs each so it's obviously ingrained in me that work is a big part of your life," she said.
"I had a part-time job during school, I worked with my mom because she ran the restaurant and even when I was little, she brought me to work because she couldn't afford minders so I would sit on a bag of rice doing my homework.
"I knew how hard my parents worked and then once I could work myself I worked with her.
"I couldn't say I was more than say seven or eight months without working."
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