Donnelly moved children's beds from windows during covid protest attacks

Former health minister Stephen Donnelly. Photo: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.ie

Former health minister Stephen Donnelly had to move his young children’s beds away from windows as missiles were thrown at the house by anti-lockdown protesters during the pandemic.

He described how ultimately the protests became so large the Office of Public Works erected a fence around the property to help protect their three young children.

“The home was targeted repeatedly,” he said. “We had to move the kids’ beds away from the windows in their room because their windows were getting targeted.” 

He said “various things” were thrown at the boys’ windows. They also experienced “people banging on the windows, banging on the front door in the middle of the night”.

Another night people were revving a motorbike outside, and displaying signs indicating they could see inside the house.

“It was tough, it was not an easy time for my wife. The kids were young which helped,” he said, though he added the boys recall the details still.

His family are relieved his political career has halted, he admitted, describing the last five years as “very tense”.

He was health minister from June 2020 until nine days ago. He lost his TD role for Wicklow with Fianna Fáil in the November 2024 election.

Discussing school closures with Brendan O’ Connor on RTÉ Radio 1, he said those decisions were taken when little was known about covid-19.

“We knew children carried the disease, we were beginning to learn it didn’t affect them as much as older people,” he said, noting a real concern for infecting older or vulnerable relatives.

I think there’s no question but that keeping kids out of school would have affected their education.” 

His biggest regret is the pandemic took up much of his time in office.

“It was a four and a half year term, the first two years were taken up entirely by covid,” he said. “There was a huge job to be done to get the health service moving the right way.” 

While he aimed to boost productivity, he said healthcare workers work hard but do not have the tools they need.

“There’s no e-health, we had people driving around the country with paper files,” he said.

“We had doctors in University Hospital Kerry trying to do their work in their car in the car-park because they couldn’t get a clinical room or couldn’t get rooms.” 

He highlighted reforms in women's health, reductions in waiting times and trolley numbers in his time. 

“This is why I talk about regret, because there are still far too many patients on trolleys,” he said.

He did not run for the Seanad, and does not expect a nomination from Taoiseach Micheál Martin. 

Looking back, he said he made a decision to focus on the health brief above spending as much time in the constituency as he previously did. 

When asked if he was finished with politics, he said: “For now, yes. Who knows what the future holds.”