O'Donovan going 'to get back on the pony' in election despite health scare
Higher Education Minister Patrick O'Donovan believes Fine Gael will return with more seats after the next general election. Picture: Sasko Lazrov/Photocall Ireland supplied by Department of Education
As he lay on the floor unable to speak or see around him, Patrick O'Donovan remembers thinking that he could become the first TD to die in the Dáil.
The minister for higher education spent several weeks in hospital and many months recovering at home after collapsing while answering questions in Leinster House.
"When something like that happens you and you have a wife and young children, your thoughts run straight to: 'Am I going to be a table quiz question? Am I going to be round four, question one: Who was the only TD to die in the Dáil?'"
However, unlike a growing list of Fine Gael colleagues who have announced they will be leaving at the next general election, Mr O'Donovan never considered bowing out of politics and is confident the party can grow seats in Munster.
The Limerick TD's health scare came in late June last year without warning. That morning, he had been on national radio and, walking back in the sunshine to Leinster House, he had stopped to listen to musicians outside the Gaiety Theatre.
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"It was actually one of the most unstressed days that I've ever had," he said.
"I was answering a question if I'm not mistaken about at primary healthcare centre in Connemara, as Gaeilge. Then, all of a sudden, everything started to go horribly wrong," the father of three said.
The Dáil was suspended and an ambulance was called as his ministerial colleagues, Anne Rabbitte and Jack Chambers, came to his assistance.
"I was very lucky. I don't in any way understate how lucky I was, where it happened, when it happened, and who was around to look after me.
"While I lost my sight and my speech for period of time, I could hear them. I knew that I wasn't alone.
"However unpleasant it was for me, it was terrifying altogether for from my wife at home on the end of the phone to one of the lads in my office who was saying: 'He's here on the floor, he can't speak but if you want to speak to him now we have the phone up him.'
Mr O'Donovan spent around three weeks in Beaumont Hospital before taking last summer off away from his phone and office "not by choice but by sheer necessity".
"I had to take some serious lifestyle changes around the things that I used to do, cramming three weeks into one, crazy stuff you know, attending everything and anything.Â
"At the time, I had two Government departments: Gaeltacht and the Office of Public Works (OPW); a huge constituency; a busy constituency office; international travel obligations; all of that and a young family.
"It's personal and it just means that I have to do things differently to what I did before and manage it.Â
"I'm under continuous supervision and assessment from doctors in Beaumont, who are happy with where I am at the moment — which is most heartening for me."
A total of 15 of his party colleagues have now announced they will stand down at the next general election, but he says his own health scare didn't cause him to reflect on his political future.
"I always felt I was going to get back on the pony."
After returning to Leinster House last Autumn, he said 2024 has been a mixture of highs when he was promoted to the Department of Higher Education and lows when he lost his mother.
However, he is confident that Fine Gael will return with more seats, especially in Munster, after the election.
"There's definitely been a total change with regard to how the public view us as a party, where we're going as a party, there's no doubt about it.
"There's a number of constituencies here where we would be, on an average day, looking to make gains — like South Tipperary, Waterford, Cork South West. Those will be areas that we will be anxious to get, obviously, plus to retain the ones that we have.
"Anybody that would dispute that, just look at the local election results in Munster, they were particularly strong. Even in my own county there was really strong results here.
"We're not in a bad space, I think we have hit rock bottom and we're now on the way up."
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