Jackie Healy-Rae recalls childhood poverty and hunger in 'Last Great Interview'

Jackie Healy-Rae — who died aged 83 on December 5, 2014 — barely mentioned politics in his final interview. Photo: Don MacMonagle

Jackie Healy-Rae’s last interview before he died is to air on Christmas Eve, in which he talks candidly about how members of his family grew up in extreme poverty and came close to starvation.

Dubbed as 'The Last Great Interview' by his TD son Michael, it was recorded in a hotel room about a year or two before the colourful patriarch of the Healy-Rae political dynasty passed away. Just one question was asked in the interview, and it took him just under an hour to answer it.

Tralee-based Maurice O’Keeffe, who with wife Jane run the Irish Life and Lore archives, asked him: “What is your earliest memory?”

In reply, and unlike many of his previous interviews, Mr Healy-Rae — who died aged 83 on December 5, 2014 — barely mentioned politics. Instead, he talks about his memories of growing up on his family’s farm at Reacashlagh, near Kilgarvan as the first of six of Daniel and Mary Healy’s children.

And he says if it wasn’t for the woman who ran Quills Shop in Kilgarvan village, he and members of his family would have starved to death.

Michael, who set up the interview - which will be aired live on his Facebook page at 6pm on Christmas Eve - said: “When he retired from the Dáil in 2011, Maurice asked me to see if I could organize it.

“So I carried my father to a hotel, upstairs into a bedroom. Maurice was there waiting with his tape, ready to go.

“And Maurice asked one question, just one question: ‘Jackie, What's your earliest memory?

He started with his earliest memory and he brought him up to that night when we were inside that hotel.

Michael says that his father’s earliest memory was growing up in extreme poverty.

“He credits a local shop in Kilgarvan, it was Quills, and the lady of the shop he actually says during the course of the interview only for that woman, they would have starved.

“Surprisingly, the interview is less about politics, and more about his early childhood and the fact that his father became disabled at a very young age and my father had to give up school at a very young age.

“It's like a personal account of his early life.”

He added: “It was extremely interesting, even though there was some of it I would have known but then there was a lot of it that I mightn't have, like some of the stories and some of the things he went through.”