Fergus Finlay: Toddy O'Sullivan — A fierce advocate for Cork, Labour, and an old friend
Labour stalwart Toddy O’Sullivan died
this week. He fought strongly for the
redistribution of wealth to those who
had little or nothing. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
BAH HUMBUG. If you’re
expecting Christmas spirit from me, you’re not getting it. Not yet anyway. Not until I get a few things off my chest. And they’re about the way we do things around here.
Storm Barra for starters. Who in heaven’s name decided that, because it was going to be very windy for a day or two, we should shut down everything, everywhere? What was the point of that? Why such an unimaginative over-reaction?
I know there were parts of the country that were battered, and of course it was important to keep people safe in those parts. But a very significant proportion of our population lives along a stretch of the east coast that runs, say, from Arklow to Dundalk. There’s a bit in the middle called Dublin.
In those parts, it was a bit windier than usual. And every primary school, every secondary school, and every childcare facility in the entire place was shut. For what?
I think my daughter Emma knows the answer to that question. She emailed me in her own frustration, and among other things she said was: “The ease with
which schools and childcare were closed, the blanket closures and the lack of options for late openings or early closures all smelled of decision-making which had no consideration at all for working parents.”
In fact, I think she hit the nail on the head when she added that the people making the decision to shut everything down had more women and mothers in mind than parents. There are still in Ireland deeply ingrained norms whereby women are expected to stay at home.
That’s the main reason why, as Emma puts it, childcare is unbelievably prohibitively expensive. Although we have no system that would enable women to stay home with their children until they are a year old, there are many childcare facilities that won’t take children under a year, leaving women in desperate situations at an extremely difficult and vulnerable time in their lives.
And it’s the main reason, surely, why childcare is seen as dispensable when the wind blows. It might have been necessary to close down some facilities, but it was never necessary to close everything. It was just one of those easy decisions where, not to be too impolite about it, asses could get covered, and everyone else could somehow or other cope with the added burden of responsibility.
In some ways, an even worse, more crass, decision was made last week, by a Government that seems to have stopped thinking at all. I’m thinking about the decision to spend millions — some reports say €200m — to give every householder in Ireland a rebate of €100 on their first utility bill in the new year.
I know families — and I’m one of them — that will survive without that bit of largesse. I know families, on the other hand, that are living in deep poverty — rent poverty, food poverty, fuel poverty. But some eejit of a government minister — or maybe it was all of them — decided we’re all going to get it.
Putting more where it’s needed more, and less where it’s needed less, is apparently beyond their wit and imagination.
I’m sorry, but it’s the most vulgar form of gimmickry and clientelism. If this is the way our Government carries on in the middle of its term, it frightens the hell out of me to wonder what they’ll be like as we get closer to an election.
I believe in redistribution — always have, all my life. The phrase “to whom much is given, from them much will be expected” may have been originally come from the Gospel according to Luke, but it has always meant something to me about the way public policy should operate.
We take in reason from those who have lots, in order to be better able to support those who are struggling. Only the crassest of politics does it the other way around.
I don’t want to finish this week without remembering Toddy O’Sullivan, who died in the last few days (and who fought strongly for redistribution for those who had little or nothing). Many tributes have already been paid to Toddy, who will always be remembered as a legend in a city that has produced an enormous number of political giants.
There were two politicians in my time from Cork whose first names were enough on a poster or a canvassing card. One was Jack, the other Toddy. The latter will always be special to me because I’d never have had a career in politics without him. Mind you, if he hadn’t won that seat, more than 40 years ago, my career would have been very short-lived.
It was my old friend Pat Magner who persuaded me to work for Toddy, who had a close but unsuccessful run at a by-election in 1980, and was going to have another go in the general election of 1981. With no experience but loads of energy, I was put in charge of publicity for the campaign.
I’ve occasionally over the years been described as a bit bull-headed in matters of this sort, but I took it on myself to design a poster and sent it off to the printers. There was consternation when it arrived back because I had omitted the candidate’s surname from the poster. It simply featured his smiling face over the words ‘Toddy’s the Man!’. Nothing like that had ever been done before.
Everyone thought I’d lost my marbles (to such an extent that my earlier confidence and exuberance was replaced by an agony of doubt). We had no choice — because there was no budget — but to use them. And they must have worked because Toddy topped the poll. My career was launched!
The sad truth for me, though, is that Toddy was elected that year because he was Toddy. Known and loved throughout the city, he was to be one of its fiercest advocates and champions for the rest of his life, a Lord Mayor, as a TD for 16 years, and a Cork member of Government twice.
His integrity was total — in little things and in big ones.
Although the Lord Mayoral chain is reckoned to be worth a couple of thousand votes in Cork politics, he would never allow it to be used on election literature because he believed the chain belonged to the whole city.
And in almost his first full term as a TD, he was one of a tiny number of deputies to resist all forms of pressure during the bitter debates over the Eighth Amendment. He and his Cork colleague, Eileen Desmond, both believed passionately that the Eighth Amendment was simply anti-woman, and there was no budging them from that position. Eileen didn’t live to see the Eighth repealed, but I hope Toddy felt a sense of vindication when it finally happened.
Throughout a long career, Toddy never lost his love of Cork and its people. He was a warm and bluff character, who called things as he saw them. He was always, to coin a Cork phrase, a thorough gent. Those who knew him will be genuinely sad at the passing of an old friend, as I am.
