Putting people before policy worked for Ireland's longest standing politician: Cllr Noel Collins, 1933-2022
Cllr Noel Collins with Ballyannon Wood in the background which is located at Ballinacurra, Co Cork, outside Midleton, the east Cork town where he settled in 1965. File picture: Maurice O'Mahony
Cork County Councillor, Noel Collins, who died on June 13, was Ireland’s longest-serving public representative.
Coining the slogan, “Collins will be around when others can’t be found”, the east Cork politician never lost an election, from his first election campaign in 1967 to his final candidature in 2019.
Noel was born Patrick Noel Collins on December 15, 1933 in Lusk, north Co Dublin.
He remained coy about his age to the point where eventually he trimmed three years off it lest it affected his election prospects.
Throughout his life, he spoke very little of his family and while understood to have been an only child, he once spoke of his mother having died in childbirth.
Decades later, he voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment, believing “she would have lived” if the law had allowed her life to be saved.
At 22, Noel discarded an early career as a barman in Dublin to become a seminarian “in the vineyard of Christ” at Mount Melleray, County Waterford.
He claimed his bartender experiences led him to being a lifelong teetotaller.
At 26, he left his aspirations to the priesthood behind and instead, to “go forth and sort the sheep from the goats in my own way”.
He took the boat to London where he acquired a diploma in social science through a connection with the Oblate Fathers at Conway House in Kilburn.
In a strange irony, he had been introduced to the Fathers by Midleton ex-pat, Flan O’Meara, who ran a shoe shop in the city.
He spent Sunday afternoons at Hyde Park Corner, honing the considerable oratory and debating skills that would become his trademark.
It was also an exercise ground for the underlying humour that brought balance to the humanistic passion that was then, and would remain, his signature.
Regularly heckled by compatriots, when a man from Kerry asked if he "knows so much about family planning, how many times could a condom be used?". Noel replied “If a thing is worth making it's worth putting instructions on it!”.
He would credit those London years with instilling the deep commitment to social justice that characterised his personality and his politics throughout his life.
Returning to Dublin after five years, Noel dedicated his time to working in Dublin youth detention centres.
In 1965, while holidaying in Midleton as a guest of Garda Michael Penrose, whom he had met in Mount Melleray, he decided to remain in the east Cork town.
He found work and lodgings in McCarthy’s grocery on the Main Street and where the three McCarthy sisters would in time prove highly effective campaign partners for many elections.
Noel had an inherent instinct for harnessing the media to enhance his causes and by the mid 1960s had forged a reputation for his social conscience letters to RTÉ radio’s massively popular programme, which aired on Saturday nights.
He also befriended local Fine Gael personalities, including influential treasurer, Jack Parker, and joined the local Béal na Bláth commemoration committee.
On the back of his radio profile particularly, Fine Gael general secretary, James W Sanfey, invited him to represent the party in the 1967 Midleton UDC elections.
Rather than ruffle local feathers as a ‘blow in’ Noel did not canvass, yet romped home, failing by only two votes to top the poll.
In 1969 he canvassed for FG candidate Gerard Cott in a successful Dáil campaign.
When “a cranky parish priest” berated him for speaking outside the church, Noel replied: “You’re preaching the Gospel inside and I’m going to preach it outside.”
At this time he also worked as secretary to Liam Burke TD, for six years.
When Fine Gael overlooked him in favour of Paddy Hegarty to contest Cott’s seat in 1973, Noel quit the party and ran against Hegarty as an Independent.
His bid failed but the campaign elevated his profile and paved the way for his entry to Cork County Council a year later.
During the early 1980s, as a member of Cork County Council’s South Cork Advisory Health Committee, he was instrumental in bringing a mobile x-ray service to rural communities as part of a cancer detection service.
Seeing staff walk flights of stairs with food for residents, he ensured a lift was installed at Midleton Community hospital.
In the mid-1980s it was a matter of great pride to him that as chairman of Cork County Council’s Southern Committee he opened five housing schemes in one day, across Macroom, Carrigtwohill, Cloyne, Ballymacoda, and Cobh.
When a 2003 Local Government Act dispelled councillors from serving simultaneously as county and town councillors Noel, in a typically determined manoeuvre, managed to circumvent the ruling by accepting a wage from his county council mandate only.
His modus operandi as a public representative will almost certainly never be repeated.
After leaving his lodgings at the McCarthys', he lived at St Jude’s, a cottage he bought on St Mary’s Road, Midleton, in the 1970s. St Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes.
For a while he also ran a grocery business from an adjacent premises.
He would rise at 6.30am and, eschewing modern technology, compose up to 40 letters a day on an old typewriter, before posting them to constituents, council officials, and journalists.
A non-driver, he accumulated a wide circle of car-owning friends who were (usually) happy to convey him to wherever and whenever he required them to do so.
He allegedly did not possess a telephone but that myth was frequently exploded by recipients of ‘unidentified number’ calls.
What he didn’t have was a phone number.
Otherwise, County Hall officials and neighbours on St Mary’s Road would take messages and relay them to him.
His Saturday morning clinics at Midleton’s Copper Kettle pub were further demonstration of his commitment to the people.
Noel’s last election campaign was the 2019 municipal district/county council contest, in which, as he regularly did, he topped the poll with 2,267 first preferences.
Due to failing health he did not attend any further meetings after November 2020.
His political longevity may be attributed to placing people before policies, always seeking to bend the latter to fit the former, rather than vice versa.
When a mother languishing on the housing list snared a rat under her baby’s cot in her vermin-infested house, Noel brought the dead creature to that night's meeting of the urban district council.
As officials accused him of falsely giving the town a bad name, Noel produced the deceased creature from a bag and tossed it at them.
Ordered to remove it immediately, he declined, arguing it was “in good company”. The ensuing publicity alerted the health board and the family was re-housed within a week.
He abhorred domestic violence and throughout his career personally financed taxis to Cork refuge centres for those fleeing domestic violence, often in the early hours.
Fuelled by an intense loathing of injustice, his council attendances sometimes featured loud debate and walkouts and although mellowing somewhat in latter years, he found the dissolution of power under local government amendments deeply frustrating.
“God help us all,” he would emit when told that his adopted motion or proposal would now be considered by next tier of authority.
Away from politics a natural kindness and strong joie de vivre would combine.
Blessed with a powerful singing voice, he was known to have regaled alarmed visitors to County Hall with a spontaneous rendition of 'How Great Thou Art'.
He organised Christmas carol sessions and regular pilgrimages to Knock and to the Michael Collins tour of Béal na Bláth, Sam’s Cross, and Clonakilty.
Noel Collins died on June 13 at Oak Lodge nursing home, Cloyne.
His body has been donated to UCC for medical research or, as he once put it, “to further my education”.
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