'I’m not playing against the wind yet': Micheál Martin on Christmas in Cork and reasons for hope
Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the offices of The Irish Examiner, Linn Dubh, Blackpool, Cork pictured beside a wall of 'old newspapers' at the reception. Picture: Larry Cummins.
It’s often been said that a week is a long time in politics. Now the political advisors are saying a week is a long time in Covid.
Since his election as Taoiseach in June 2020, Micheál Martin has been trying to chart a course for Ireland through one of the greatest public health crises in a century.
From dark days last January to new dawns in late summer and a return to dark days again, it has been another rollercoaster year punctuated by his national addresses which heralded in lockdowns, restrictions on personal freedoms and devastating sectoral closures, the unveiling of roadmaps to recovery and gradual reopenings, and, more recently, an ever-tightening set of new restrictions as Omicron explodes.
He has also overseen the rollout of a vaccination programme that has reached over 90% of the eligible population, he has introduced a new climate change policy and a new approach to tackle the housing crisis.
But Covid has overshadowed it all.
“Managing Covid is the most enduring part of the job,” says Mr Martin.
First elected to Cork City Council in 1985, and to the Dáil as a TD for Cork South Central in 1989, he was elected lord mayor of Cork in 1992.
He served as minister for education from 1997 to 2000, as minister for health from 2000 to 2004, as minister for enterprise, trade and employment from 2004 to 2008, and as minister for foreign affairs from 2008 to 2011, after which he became leader of Fianna Fáil.
He was in government when the crash hit just over a decade ago, and he set about rebuilding the party, and public trust in it, before entering an agreement with Fine Gael, which it has been argued has cost the party dearly in the polls.
But he doesn’t put much stock in polls, and opts to take a much longer-term view.
He was elected as the 15th Taoiseach of Ireland in June 2020, a post he will hand over to Leo Varadkar this time next year. He confirmed that he plans to continue serving as tánaiste.
Observers say he has looked tired and drawn in recent weeks — a sign perhaps of the pressure, the toll it’s taking. He dismisses the notion.
“I’ll just get to bed earlier,” he laughs, before adding quickly how he’s acutely aware of the level of frustration and anger that’s out there, and how he understands why people are fatigued.
But the threat posed by Omicron cannot be underestimated, he says, and admits to being very concerned.
“I think Omicron will be challenging — the potential volume and scale of Omicron worries me because of the sheer numbers. It is very infectious and it won’t be as easy to avoid getting it,” he says, referencing the experience in the UK where cases have exploded.
And as he prepares for another Covid Christmas, his last Christmas as Taoiseach, he says he’s looking forward to some downtime, if possible.
He recalls how the countdown to last Christmas was dominated by uncertainty over Brexit, which saw negotiations concluding on Christmas Eve when the EU and the UK announced they had reached a deal on the framework of their future relations. The draft EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement brought to a close 10 months of intense negotiations.
The resignation last weekend of the UK’s Brexit minister, David Frost, was a timely reminder that Brexit hasn’t gone away and the Taoiseach is ready to deal with the outstanding issues in the new year.
“I don’t anticipate anything on the Brexit front this Christmas,” he says hopefully.
“This year I am hopefully looking forward to a few days off. Christmas is quiet for me.
“What I like about Christmas is the fact that you can sit down at home, read a book, watch a movie, have a chat with family.
“I like walking and lazing around the place, I like the downtime.
“My brother and his wife will come over on Christmas Day. Mary does the cooking and we all help out and my favourite is the Christmas pudding since I was a young fella.”
A family friend, Charlotte O’Brien, supplies the Christmas puddings, he reveals, and he says he hopes the GAA club he’s supported all his life, Nemo Rangers, can stage its long puc competition in the days after Christmas.
After turning 61 last August, he’s begun to reflect a bit more on life.
“The older you get the younger you think you still are,” he says.
“I’m very conscious of fitness. Now, I’m not that fit but I walk a lot.
“I try to stay healthy but you do reflect a bit more during the second half of your life.
“Now I’m not quite playing against the wind yet.
“But you do reflect a bit more. Every moment becomes a little more precious and you say ‘let’s make the most of things’.
“But the good thing about modern living, and we all have our ups and downs, is that people are living longer, living healthier, and from a health point of view that actually is a population truth.”
He speaks about those addresses to the nation he’s had to deliver from the steps of Government Buildings, which have for the most part been bad news for thousands of families.
“You have to go out there and deliver the message,” he says.
“I am comfortable enough in decision-making and I’m comfortable enough in that political world where analysis has to be done and then one has to take decisions.
“I can kind of pull back from it and say ‘look, this has to be done, let’s go and do it’.
“On the other hand, you do have to have an understanding that this is impacting on people and businesses and sectors, particularly on hospitality, tourism, and aviation. They would have suffered more than most.”
At various stages during the year, he was approached by people who had been affected by the various restrictions, including a couple who approached him in West Cork and asked him “to do something about baptisms”.
“That’s when the real personal impact of the Government decisions hit home,” he says.
“They were very worried that they didn’t have their child baptised.
“The weddings were a very tough situation too.
He talks about the “feedback” he got from expectant mothers on the maternity hospital restrictions too.
But he says those restrictions were related more to clinical decisions on the ground, taken by each maternity hospital, where the masters of the hospitals had decisions to make too, given the risks posed by Covid.
Shutting down the construction sector at the start of last year also really worried him, he admits.
“That worried me because housing is such a crisis,” he says.
“We stopped house building for three months because of Covid and I kept reflecting on that because I need houses built, we need houses built in this country. We need to get to 35,000 a year.
“By October, we had 31,000 [starts] but Covid has hit that momentum.
“And you had small builders coming up to you and saying ‘we could be tipping away here and it wouldn’t be a problem’.”
He and his Government have also been criticised for the withdrawal of contact tracing in schools, and for apparent dithering on the Hepa filters issue even as Covid began to surge in primary schools after the October mid-term break.
That post-Halloween surge was another low point and a worry, he says, but he defends the Government’s approach to managing it.
“Schools would have been very personal to me. I have a real passion for education. I really think children need to be in schools,” he says.
“The advice was that schools should assess their own individual situations.
“They [the advisors] gave us a hierarchy of advice in relation to ventilation, windows, and CO2 monitors, and said they should suffice to assess air quality.
“So they weren’t recommending Hepa filters for every classroom, in every school.”
We are chatting following his visit to a primary school in Cork City where he says the teachers there asked him to do everything he could to ensure the schools were kept open in the run-up to Christmas.
The teachers there told him nobody wants the schools closed, he says.
“Schools are where children socialise. Even though they have a wonderful IT system and all the rest of it, they said online learning is not the same,” he says.
The school he’s just visited has no issues with ventilation because of the structure of the building but he accepts that other schools will have problems.
A technical team has been available for some time to school principals who wanted specific advice, he says, but he insists that the official advice to the Government “wasn’t strong in terms of every school having a Hepa filter”.
“They were looking at more of what suits each particular school,” he says.
The decision the week before last to approve some €62m in minor grants works funding for schools, some of which can be spent on air filters, was not so much a U-turn, he says, but rather a decision by the Government “to do more”.
“We said let’s do more. Not every school will need filters but some will,” he says.
He admits that more will be required in the medium to long term, including the upgrading of ventilation systems in some schools.
“That’s work we will have to do but we are providing more funding now if people require filters and we are going to provide additional funding over and above what has been a record amount of funding for schools in terms of the minor works, which has doubled over the last year.”
Some of his critics have accused him of micromanaging, particularly in health and education, where he appointed first-time ministers to two key portfolios. He insists he doesn’t but he defends his involvement as Taoiseach in some of the key decisions in both departments.
“What I do in Covid, and I make no apologies, as Taoiseach, you have to be involved with the minister for health,” he says.
“Because of the gravity of the situation, obviously I’m in touch with Stephen Donnelly every day, and with Paul Reid and Tony Holohan, the key principals around the health side, to make sure that we are doing what we have to do and keeping on top of it because it’s a fast-moving situation.
“Four weeks ago, we didn’t know about Omicron and now it’s here.”
He speaks again of his love for education and praises Norma Foley’s “instinctive grasp of education” but says: “I hope I don’t annoy her from time to time.
"To me, education is central to what we do in Government and that’s why we are anxious to get the schools reopened because they give you the foundation stones for the future.”
And because so much flows from those addresses to the nation, he says he, as Taoiseach, and his office, have to be involved in the decisions being made by various Government departments to ensure that there is an integrated whole-of-Government approach.
He also explains his rationale for introducing a committee-based system at Cabinet.
“It’s hard work and can be frustrating because it takes a lot of time but it knuckles people down, there is no hiding place,” he says.
One of his own political highlights was seeing Ireland’s work on the UN Security Council, which it chaired in September, and his visit to New York that month for his address on climate and security.
“That meeting in New York was a highlight for Ireland. First of all, it was a culmination of good work done by young Irish diplomats which really impressed me.
He pays glowing tribute to Ireland’s work on issues in Syria, Iran, and Ethiopia, and points out how Ireland’s stance on Ethiopia, in particular, didn’t go down well with the Ethiopian government.
A statement by the UN Security Council on Ethiopia, issued on November 5, led by Ireland together with African members of the council, and echoing the calls of the UN secretary-general, stressed the importance of full humanitarian access, a ceasefire, and political dialogue between parties in Ethiopia.
It led to the Ethiopian government telling the Irish embassy in Addis Ababa that four of the six Irish diplomats serving there must leave the country within a week.
The Ethiopian authorities indicated that the decision to scale down the size of the Irish embassy was due to the positions Ireland had articulated internationally, including at the UN Security Council, on the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia.
Mr Martin says Ireland, which was the first country to commit funds to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of the crisis as it began last year, and which has donated some €165m in development and humanitarian supports to Ethiopia in recent years, was very anxious that the humanitarian corridor in Tigray would be protected.
The reaction from the Ethiopian government shows the impact Ireland can have globally, he says.
The former minister for foreign affairs says he is always reflecting on how Ireland can improve its capacity as a country and that the work at UN level was a highlight, as was seeing first-hand the work of Ireland’s “capable team” at the UN and at our embassy in New York.
He believes that the Government’s climate change initiative announced during the year will be seen in the future as a “turning point on climate policy”, with Cop26 and American re-engagement in climate policy through the Biden administration and its envoy, John Kerry, giving a renewed momentum to the issue.
“Now we have to deliver. I accept that. But the laws are passed now, there is momentum, there is a trajectory and a direction of travel that won’t be turned back, in my view. It can’t be turned back.”
The Government’s Housing for All strategy will also begin to deliver next year, he predicts.
“Housing for All, to me, is a historic shift in housing,” he says.
“But we have to keep the momentum going for the next decade and always have a good stock of social housing, keep building social housing, help people who can’t afford houses to buy affordable houses.
“At least I can see light at the end of the tunnel now in terms of the number of commencements this year.”
One of the big lessons from Covid, he says, is the clear need for much more investment in the health service, particularly in the State’s intensive care system.
“It means increased investment in health going forward, no question,” he says.
The Taoiseach has always guarded his family’s privacy, shielding his wife, Mary, and their children, Micheál Aodh, Aoibhe, and Cillian, from the glare of publicity.
Friends and neighbours describe him as unassuming and low-key and say he is very uncomfortable with, but reluctantly accepts, the need since his election as Taoiseach for a constant security presence in the quiet cul-de-sac in Ballinlough, where he and Mary have lived since 1990, and for the Garda security detail that now accompanies him almost everywhere he goes.
He has described the street where they live as “their oasis” and people got a glimpse of it in June 2020 when their neighbours came out to welcome him home after his election as Taoiseach.
Covid restrictions prevented Mary and the family from travelling to the National Convention Centre to watch his election and Mr Martin’s voice cracked with emotion during his speech as he paid tribute to his family for their support over the years, describing Mary as his “pillar of support” since their college days.
He dropped the privacy guard this year when he gave an interview to in which he spoke about his grief following the deaths of two of their children, Ruairí and Léana.
Ruairí, who was born in 1999, died of cot death aged just five weeks. In 2010, Léana, who had cardiac problems, died at the age of seven.
“Immediately in the years afterwards, we were very conscious, and certainly the kids were, they’d go, ‘do your politics, but don’t bring Léana and Ruairí into it’,” he said in the interview in June.
“Even now I’m self-conscious about that. There’s always been a bit of us that’s held the privacy thing. On the other hand, other families go through bereavement, and you can help those. At times you may be in a position to help, to talk to families. But everyone goes through it differently. There’s no one way of dealing with grief or trauma.”
He was widely praised for speaking so honestly in public about such personal and deep grief.
At the end of a wide-ranging interview with Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio 1 last weekend, he was asked about the reaction from the public to that June interview.
“I never really talked about it because you always kept it private to protect everybody and I think there is an importance around that too and the dignity of death and our lost ones as well are entitled to that too,” he said.
But he told O’Connor that the deaths of Ruairí and Léana have shaped him as a person.
“It does give me a sense, I think, of the finality of when death occurs in a family, the devastation that occurs to a family.
“You are full of optimism as a young person. Something like that hits you, and life is no longer full of those certainties. It makes you a more anxious parent. It makes you, you have to try and deal with that, you live with that, you know.”
The experiences have informed his philosophy of leadership, with the priority throughout the pandemic to prevent people from dying, he said.
More than 3,500 people have died so far this year either from or with Covid and Mr Martin said he has become concerned that death is becoming a metric.
When newspapers picked up on his radio comments and published them online, there was an at times heartless and vile reaction from some on social media, with many people posting comments accusing Mr Martin of “bringing up the issue for political gain”.
There was a similarly hostile reaction on social media a few days earlier when Mr Martin arrived for his booster jab appointment at the City Hall vaccination centre in Cork, and despite the efforts of some to escort him straight inside, he insisted on joining the queue.
He was accused by some online critics of using it as a PR opportunity, of queuing purely for the optics, with others criticising where and how the State car parked.
Part and parcel of modern politics?
He says perhaps, and he says he does read some of the social media criticism, particularly on Twitter.
“When sport was going through a rocky period last year there was a bit of it going on but I just have to put up with it,” he says.
“But I don’t worry about the abuse. I am very immune to that.
“I think some people are coming from vantage points and that’s their view, that’s where they’re coming from, they’re trying to undermine, so I don’t take it too personally.”
He does worry though about his adult children having to read some of the comments.
“They are very social media-aware. That’s their medium, they are very aware of it.
“Very often, they’re contacting me and texting me about it and I will say ‘get off the Twitter.”
And he reveals that when nightclubs were closed under the restrictions, his sons tackled him and said, ‘what are you at, like?’ "They’re out there in society, so you get a very quick indication of what that age cohort thinks about what you’ve just done."
The start of the new year will be difficult as the impact of Omicron hammers home, but Mr Martin is keen that the Government makes progress on housing and then delivers on climate policy.
“Economic recovery is crucial to everything,” he says.
“The strategy we have taken this year has worked very well. We have the fastest-growing economy in quarter three in Europe. The finances are improving. The taxation is about €5.9bn ahead of profile, and that’s not all corporation tax, it’s income tax and Vat.”
Despite the fact that the new restrictions mean more wage supports will be required, Mr Martin says they are not expecting “as much scarring on the economy” as was originally thought when the pandemic started.
“Exports are flying, manufacturing, life sciences, and technology companies are doing very well, the domestic economy is up about 3.5% in the last quarter. Things are moving well.
“Omicron is what we have to watch — and don’t undermine the progress in the first quarter of next year.
“That will give us the capacity to do things in terms of the broader economy, in areas like childcare.”
In an address last January to the Institute of International and European Affairs, Mr Martin said the country was “balanced between deep danger and great hope”.
And with the country poised in that position again, Mr Martin says there is reason for hope.
“Omicron is the danger. But the positives are that Europe is gearing up to give the green light to Pfizer and Moderna to develop a vaccine for Omicron. These companies can do that within 100 days.
“So that tells me that we are developing greater capacity in Europe and in the world to deal with this virus.
“Antivirals are coming on stream and medicines will get better.
“I just feel our firepower is improving in terms of fighting this virus.
“That’s why I have more hope for 2022. And also the degree to which the economy came back this year suggests to me that there is considerable potential for 2022 economically and socially.”
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