Rebecca Moynihan Interview
The general election 2020 has been called and it is fast approaching us. The government have been propped up by Fianna Fail in a confidence and supply agreement for the past few years. A coalition of sorts that has been maintained to bring political certainty during a time of economic anxiety and fears of the repercussions of Brexit and the possibility of the emergence of a hard border. Luckily the prospects of a no deal Brexit or a hard Brexit have been avoided thanks to the rejiging of the withdrawal agreement by Boris Johnson. Now, according to Leo, the country is ready to go to the polls.
One such candidate that is running in the election is none other than Labour’s Rebecca Moynihan. Rebecca has been working in Rathmines college now for over 7 years and has been a councillor representing the South West inner city on Dublin city council for over 10 years.
I sat down with Rebecca before the Christmas break to have a chat with her about politics and life in college.
Q What got you into politics in the first place?
A Well I suppose I had always kinda been like politically active or politically engaged I was a member of the youth wing of the party for
a very long time and had been active from various different campaigns. Particularly around things like what became the repeal campaign, like abortion rights and student rights issues and then in 2009 the opportunity came to run so I did and I won and so I’ve been very active in the council since.
Q Awesome that was obviously a big achievement at the time, you were very proud of yourself I can imagine?
A Yeah, feels like a long time ago but I suppose the achievement isn’t being elected, it’s what you can do when you’re there and the learning how to kind of work a system in terms of finding out like what you want to do. So what you to do on a city level and then what you want to do on a local level and how you can try and you know make that work for you and politics can be very difficult and it can be very frustrating and you can get very caught up in the day to day stuff, that you lose the big picture stuff and ideology.
Q I was wondering then how do you I suppose juggle both of your jobs you know as a councillor and working here in the school as a counsellor yourself.
A It’s quite difficult, very busy all the time.
I can imagine.
A It is one of the things, that local government isn’t very well resourced, so you know you’re a one man band in terms of you know like being responsible for an awful lot and having a balancing act, but it is very difficult, but we all have it, because it’s, not a, you know it’s 17,000 a year or something like that. So must people have to work and have to hold down a job and it is very difficult and like one of the things you will notice particularly in the last council, a lot of councillors in their kind of mid age, didn’t run again and so you are losing a generation of councillors at a time when people are having families and having kids and settling down and so you then end up with a council that’s not necessarily reflective of a city or your local authority at large.
Q Cool, so I guess my next question would be eh you know you’ve been a councillor for over ten years now in the south west inner city and I suppose what are some of your achievements?
A I think one of the things is you know delivering green spaces within the area. I got the first public park delivered in over a 100 years in the liberties area which is a really big achievement and we are going to have a full sized GAA pitch in terms of Teresa’s gardens land and again it will be the first you know sporting infrastructure that’s been delivered within an inner city neighbourhood, ehm, ever! Which I think are really really big achievements and things like getting sanitary provision within Dublin city council buildings, it’s going to be a big one. There’s a 100,000 allocated in this years budget for that and a roll out and kind of normalising that. So there’s been loads of examples of things like that where your making kind of physical interventions , and your you know… hopefully when I walk away from it I will be able to say well I know I delivered that. The park is a very public manifestation every time I pass it I’m like, I did that, you know?
Q Oh yeah that’s very cool I can imagine, and so I suppose one thing that I think is particularly annoying about the city itself is just it’s so dangerous for cyclists essentially you know and it would be great especially, kind of with the climate crisis and what not to get more people out of their cars and on their bikes so I suppose eh , how long would it take to implement I suppose policies that could bring in more cycle lanes or something like that, that would enable more people to get on their bikes.
A. So here is one of the problems with local government and as I refer to before that you’re looking at what you can do and have an impact on a city level and a local level. One of the problems of local government is that we don’t actually have the same revenue raising powers and ability to do that. We have a national transport authority right we should have a Dublin transport authority. We don’t have … cycling has gotten worse I’m a cyclist I cycle everyday over the last ten years cycling has actually gotten worse in the city and there is no responsibility that’s taken at a city council level for improving cycle lane infrastructure and I’ve got a list of questions I got this week in terms of like what’s eh what infrastructure projects are there and being developed. We’re reliant on both the national transport authority for funding to come down and then we’re reliant on eh governmental level and you know it’s the same across a lot of our functions like housing for example the political will is there for public house building programme and have public housing the land is their within Dublin city for those, for that stuff, but we’re reliant on central government where their isn’t the commitment there for funding to be brought down and cycling is the same thing. So I had hoped and anticipated that in this budget which we refused to pass last night that we were going to have additional funding for cycling, in the budget there is going to be no additional funding for cycling and that’s a real pity because the political will is certainly there on a city council political level for that funding. Small things like we’re doing a whole road resurfacing programme we do a road resurfacing programme we’re not putting in cycling lanes , we’re not putting in segregated cycle lanes and we really need to tackle the issue of domination of cars within the public sphere and yeah that’s, I think, that’s the next big challenge for the next five years and we need to have a bit of ambition around it.
Q, You’re a councillor at the moment but you’ll be running in the next general election I suppose is that a very daunting task that lays ahead?
A, Yeah but I think being a counsellor well prepares you for that in terms of you know how to you know run a political operation but it’s on a much larger scale. I suppose the daunting prospect is I like having the balance between two different lives even if it’s really really busy but also having a job and you know being able to live a day to day city life that other people do too, I think gives you a certain connection and I sometimes worry that being in a bubble of Leinster house will take you away from that and that’s one of the things that I will sometimes worry about.
Q,
That’s a really interesting point. If you were to describe like to a person like a young person like myself that doesn’t understand maybe how labour as a party is different from the rest of them? Do you think you could give a little synopsis?
A
I think one of the fundamental things that the hint is in the name and the word is labour ehm in terms of organised labour and rights for workers I think we’ve probably veered a little bit too much towards you know liberal issues exclusively, but for my mind it’s very much you know a belief in the state a belief in the state to implement and develop things where the market will fail and I think things like housing are essential to that and their is the consequences of a housing ideology that we accepted in the 1980s where we stopped building social housing we hoped that the private market could do it and we’re seeing it intensifying, the housing crisis intensifying now and I think getting back to those kind of old principles of you know state intervention when the market fails and the rights of workers to actually be able to control and equality in the tax base as well I think is really really important but we’re not anti tax either.
Q
I wanted to ask you then, I suppose do you think in our lifetime right, we might ever see a female Taoiseach because we haven’t had one yet so far at all.
A
Yeah absolutely, yeah yeah. Absolutely, but I would also prefer to have a left of centre you know left wing female Taoiseach than otherwise you know. Margaret Thatcher was also a female prime minister.
Precisely, not so popular…
Oh she was!
Well she was for some people yeah yeah yeah.
She won three elections. But I think Ireland and Britain are both living with the legacy of her ideology today.
Q
Would you be in favour yourself of gender Quotas?
A
Yeah I am because I think you need a critical mass and I really notice the difference in the council this term and there’s a lot more needs to be done to support women in politics and I think you’re seeing the kind of the very nasty discourse, certainly having a nasty impact in Britain ,but good female politicians are not sticking it out and I think women bring a different perspective to issues and work a lot more collaboratively but I also don’t think it’s a simplistic question but yeah I am in favour of gender quotas yeah.
Q
How do you think Maria Bailey has been treated by the media in the past few months?
A
It’s nothing to do with me, like that’s, you know…
Q
Random question, we’re going into the 2020 election do you think theirs a candidate at the moment that has the ability to beat Trump next year?
A
I’m a Warren fan (Elizabeth Warren) and I think her.. the politics of the fight back of kind of state interventionists in the US is quite interesting but I also think Trump emotionally speaks to his base and I think he’s probably going to win again but I was shocked he won in the first place. But I definitely do think that he emotionally speaks to his base one of the things is that America has become so divided and they can’t continue to have the politics of that division. The middle ground like, the centre is not holding and that is a problem in worldwide politics, in geopolitics at the moment. That the centre is not holding and you have two extremes both of which, neither are listening to each other and as long as that continues to happen I think the right and the very hardline irresponsible right will triumph and I think that’s what you’ve seen happening.
Q
Final question then, what would you say to some people that might want to get involved with politics themselves or become a counsellor in the future, do you have any advice from your own experience from over the years?
A
Like, do it. I think it’s very enjoyable ehm I think it’s very fulfilling but don’t expect that it’s going to be easy and don’t expect that changing things is going to be easy you know you’re going into a system and a process that you know you have to stick at things and the biggest piece of advice I gave new counsellors this year is like pick two things you want to achieve in five years or even one thing you want to achieve and do that one thing really well. Don’t have ten things because you’re just going to be talking about them at the end of the five years and you won’t be able to deliver them but have one thing where you can say I did that.
Great, thank you very much Rebecca.
