The Floating Voter

Week two of the general election campaign is almost over and we’ve already had a TV debate and a drugs controversy. 

On the Floating Voter podcast, the team look at the the head-to-head debate between Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin. This included Mr Varadkar being forced to admit to using drugs in his youth and Mr Martin struggling to deal with a newly compassionate and gracious Taoiseach.

Meanwhile, the Political Team also discussed the row over the age for the State pension and how it could affect younger workers. The canvass styles of Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin were also analysed.

The starting pistol has been sounded in the general election and the Floating Voter podcast will be with you all the way until February 8th.

On this show, Philip Ryan is joined by John Downing, Gabija Gataveckaite and Hugh O’Connell discus the first official day of the campaign.

Leo Varadkar landed the first gaffe of the campaign by trying to politicise a life-changing injury suffered by a homeless man in Dublin.

Fine Gael also tried to make it all about Brexit. Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil may be quietly creeping ahead in the election race without putting in too much effort. But there’s a long way to go yet.

After a rollercoaster year of political drama which saw Leo Varadkar de-select at TD for falling off a swing and UK voters select a prime minister who got stuck on a zip line, the Floating Voter team have compiled their coveted list of annual awards.

And for this very special podcasting event, Kevin Doyle and Philip Ryan were joined by none other than Ireland’s number political satirical impressionist Oliver Callan.

Callan came into our Talbot Street studios ahead of his forthcoming national tour to present awards to some of his best known characters.

So listen in to see who won awards for the year’s most outrageous claim, top political landlord and the award for throwing the most amount of colleagues under the bus.

Wexford TD Malcolm Byrne said he does not believe Fianna Fail will go into government with Sinn Fein after the forthcoming general election but said he would be open to working with Mary Lou McDonald’s party in the future.

Speaking to Independent.ie’s Floating Voter podcast, Mr Byrne said: “I would never rule out in the long run going into Coalition with Sinn Fein,” before adding: “It’s not going to happen in the short run.”

“We can’t expect a situation whereby we are expecting Sinn Fein to share power with the DUP (but) that you can’t envision a situation where Sinn Fein can’t come into government at some stage in the South,” he add

Mr Byrne said he believed the next government will consist of Fianna Fail, the Labour Party and the Green Party. He said the Social Democrats and Independents could possibly play a role. Mr Byrne also said he believe Micheal Martin will remain as Fianna Fail leader even if he is not elected Taoiseach after the next general election.

Finian McGrath made a promise to his wife Anne that he would never let her die in pain. And as Anne lay in a hospital bed fighting a losing battle against 14 years of cancer, Mr McGrath would insist on the nurses increasing his wife’s dose of morphine to ease the pain of her final moments.

Now, on the tenth anniversary of his wife’s untimely passing, the Disability Minister has spoken honestly about the trauma surrounding Anne’s death and has decided to back cancer victim Vicky Phelan’s call to introduce euthanasia laws in Ireland.

Speaking to the Floating Voter podcast, Mr McGrath said: “The one thing Anne used to say to me was ‘don’t let me die in pain’ and I did that so any time she was in pain they increased the morphine and I would do that for anybody and any member of my family and I would say the same about myself if I was in that situation.”

“What Vicky Phelan said in recent days brought it back to me again, the whole issue of that, and I think patients have a right to do these things and I think a lot of the medical professionals privately understand that but they won’t go there,” he added.

Mr McGrath said “some of the hospitals” in this country will “increase the amount of morphine you get to help you with the pain and sometimes then the person just goes to sleep”.

The Cabinet minister said thousands of families discuss how a terminally ill loved one’s life will end every year and insisted he would never make any moral judgement about a person who wished to chose when they pass away.

“If people want to make the decision themselves that’s their personal decision and I would be very supportive of them,” he said.

The minister said his wife was first hit with breast cancer which was successfully treated but then suffered a setback five years after the initial diagnosis. The disease then made its way into her bones and in her final days it took over her pancreas and liver. Anne was in early 50s when she passed away.

Mr McGrath says his wife was surprisingly upbeat throughout her illness and was driven by a desire to raise their two girls Caoimhe and Clíodhna.

“Anne was very positive, she was determined to raise the girls and she achieved that.” he said. “We are plodding along but there is no point in saying it didn’t have a devastating affect on the two girls,” he added.

Clíodhna, the minister’s youngest daughter, was born with Down Syndrome, and is the main inspiration behind his long running campaign to raise the plight of people with disabilities. When she was first born doctors didn’t think Cliodhna would make and she went under intensive heart surgery in Crumiln Children’s hospital.

“You’re kind of shocked. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You visualise them in ten years time, 20 years times. What are you going to do?”

“When we got over the initial shock we just knuckled and me being a bit of mouth we got involved in the parents association of Down Syndrome Ireland, then I became treasurer and then I became chairperson of the Dublin branch and then I got into the whole idea of fighting for people with disabilities and little did I think I would end up as a minister for disabilities,” he added

The minister said he does worry about who will look after Clíodhna when he passes on and said this is huge concern for all families of children with intellectual disabilities. .

“It is an awful worry but the good news is we have set up a system which is the cradle to grave,” he said.

“I am meeting all these parents in their 70s and 80s and they haven’t got long left and they want me to make sure their adult son or daughter has a service so I am using the final budget I will probably ever have to prioritise those cases and I will take the hit when it comes to other areas,” he added.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath has revealed he received a death threat after he proposed legislation which would regulate sulky racing.Mr McGrath said he was approached by an individual in his hometown of Clonmel, Tipperary and told he would be shot in Dublin over his plans to regulate the horse racing activity which is popular among the Travelling community.

Speaking on the Floating Voter podcast, Mr McGrath said: “I was threatened on April 10, 2017 that I would be shot in Dublin for trying to stop the fun with this regulation.”“I was surrounded by four individuals in Clonmel outside a shop. I made a statement to gardai and so did my daughter who was in the car with me and they told me I would be shot in Dublin, by the big boys in Dublin,” he added.

The Tipperary TD said sulky racing is a “huge problem” in Clonmel where he claims “three and four year olds” are sometimes seen “hanging off” off horse drawn carts.“They block up roads four abreast and terrorise people going home from work and everybody is afraid of their life of them,” he said“You can’t say boo or you’re a racist (and) that’s the problem in this country, you can’t criticise them because they have ethnic status which I opposed,” he added. Mr McGrath insisted he was “not a racist” and added that some of his “best friends” are travellers.

Separately, he defended comments about Nigerians living in Ireland made by Independent TD Noel Grealish in the Dail.“I ain’t no racist and if you cant’ ask a question in the Dail it’s very sad,” Mr McGrath said.Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has asked Mr Grealish to clarify claims that €3.4bn had been sent to Nigeria in eight years.Mr Donohoe said the Galway West TD was given Central Statistic Office (CSO) figures which showed around €17m a year is sent to Nigeria before he made his controversial comments.“The Taoiseach provided you with figures from the Central Statistics Office, in a Parliamentary Question reply dated 22 October 2019 and there are procedures in place to allow you to challenge these figures if you consider that they were misleading,” Mr Donohoe wrote.“I am disappointed with the apparent ethnic basis of your statements and would welcome any steps that you would be willing to take to clarify on this aspect. It is inappropriate to single out one country in absence of evidence of wrong-doing,” he added.

On this podcast, Mr McGrath produced what he claimed was a document from the Irish Refugee Council which he said supported Mr Grealish's comments. The Irish Refugee Council told Independent.ie the document was not from their organisation but said they have used some of the statistics before. The council also said there was a lot of “spin” in the document.

A Fine Gael TD has made a last ditched effort to save Maria Bailey’s political career ahead of the party meeting tonight to decide her future.

Dublin South West TD Colm Brophy has broken ranks to say Ms Bailey should remain on the Fine Gael general election ticket in Dun Laoghaire.

Speaking on Independent.ie’s Floating Voter podcast, Mr Brophy said: “On a personal level I would not like to see Maria Bailey deselected.”

“I think she is an excellent hard-working TD in the constituency and I think she has gone through incredibly tough times in the past few months,” he added.

Mr Brophy said Ms Bailey “made a mistake” and has already “paid a cost” for the controversy surrounding the personal injury claim she took after falling off a swing in a hotel.

The Fine Gael TD’s comments come as Fine Gael’s national executive tonight decide whether or not to deselect Ms Bailey after a vote was passed by her local branch asking that their general election ticket be reviewed.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail TD James Lawless told the podcast that the party’s under fire by-election candidate Lorraine Clifford-Lee’s comments about travellers are “foolish, inane and very ill advised”.

However, Mr Lawless said it would be a “bridge too far” to expect Ms Clifford-Lee to resign over the remarks.

“You should never post anything on social media which you wouldn’t be prepared to have displayed on a billboard outside your granny’s house,” the Kildare North TD said.

He also said he would “hate to think” there was a “sneaking regard” among some voters in Dublin Fingal for Ms Clifford-Lee’s remarks.

Mr Brophy also defends Culture Minister Josepha Madigan’s calls for parents to take more responsibility for informing their children about the dangerous of online pornography.

RISE TD Paul Murphy has called for a new tax on social media companies which could prop up cash-strapped RTE.

Mr Murphy said he is supportive of a proposal by UK Labour Party leader Jeremey Corbyn to tax tech firms to fund public interest journalism.

Speaking on Independent.ie’s Floating Voter podcast, he said: Jeremy Corbyn has quite a good idea in Britain which is an idea for effectively a digital TV licence which isn’t aimed at ordinary people but is aimed at tech Giants your Twitter, your Facebook or your Googles and saying they should pay a proportion of their substantial income towards broadcasting and I’d agree with that.”

The Dublin South West TD also said a “lasting legacy” of the water charges movement can be seen in the Government’s resistance to increase the TV licence fee.

“It is a good thing that the government is scared to increase the TV licence or turn it into a broadcasting charge and all these plans,” he said.

Mr Murphy said he pays his own TV licence but believes it should be abolished and instead RTE should be funded through general taxation.

The RISE TD also said he believes socialists parties who he supports in the Dáil will try unseat him at the next general election.

Waiting times at pedestrian crossings should be reduced to just 30 seconds, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has said.

As part of an effort to encourage walking, the Dublin TD says cars should be made to wait rather than people travelling by foot.He told Independent.ie’s ‘Floating Voter’ podcast that many pedestrian lights leave walkers waiting 90 seconds before giving them a green light to cross.“Everybody jay-walks. Why? Well one of the reasons is that we have 90 second waits on a lot crossing. It doesn’t have to be like that,” he said.“If you go to San Francisco, a not too dissimilar city to Dublin in terms of wealth and affluence, you don’t have any of that 90 second wait there.”He wants local authorities to “bring the crossing times right down”.

Mr Ryan claims the Government have put too much focus on improving roads while ignoring public transport and cycling infrastructure.As a regularly cyclist in Dublin, he has only recently started wearing a helmet because “there were too many days where I felt ‘that was a bit close’”.Speaking about the increasing number of clashes between cyclist and motorists, the Dublin Bay South representative said: “Why do people get pissed off with cyclists? Because we break the law too much. Because we’re in a chaotic system where we’re reacting to traffic conditions that are impossible.”Mr Ryan has made headlines over a number of controversial proposal in recent weeks, most notably his suggestion that wolves should be reintroduced to Ireland.

He is sticking by the idea, arguing people don’t understand the benefits of having such animals in the wild.He said deer are preventing the growth of forests because “they will just literally eat everything”.“What they found in other countries when they introduced wolves, was that the wolves changed the behaviour of the deer and forest came back quicker.“It’s not going to happen any time soon. You’d have to have real scientific analysis and have the farming community with you,” Mr Ryan said.“In people’s minds and forklore wolves are scary but actually they are scared of us. They avoid human beings.”

On the podcast, Mr Ryan also discusses the Green Party’s current growth in popularity and how they will approach the next election.

Former Tánaiste Dick Spring had to be brought into the Dáil on a stretcher to vote after a serious road accident, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin has recalled.

The Wexford TD said up until the current Dáil voting was seen as being of “monumentally importance” but it has now been “cheapened”.

Speaking on Independent.ie’s ‘Floating Voter’ podcast, he referred to one incident in the early 1980s when his predecessor as Labour Party leader wasn’t allowed to miss a vote despite being seriously injured.

Mr Spring, a junior minister at the time, was a passenger in a garda driven car which was involved in a fatal accident in Tipperary in December 1981.

“I remember Dick Spring being carried in on a stretcher to vote. In tight votes, he was required to be present and physically brought into the chamber because at the time he wasn’t allowed a pair,” Mr Howlin said.

“I remember myself coming out of the chamber one evening and meeting Martin Cullen who suffered terribly with his back.

He was ashen with agony and I said to him ‘for God’s sake, you’re not physically fit to be here’. But the Whips said he had to be there to vote.

“Up to this Dáil, votes were deadly serious matters and people took them deadly seriously.”

Mr Howlin blames confidence and supply for the current ‘Votegate’ controversy, saying the Government now regularly loses votes and nobody pays attention.

He wants a system similar to the European Parliament introduced, whereby TDs would be required to insert a card into the Dáil voting machine in order to activate it.

“I remember the debate when electronic voting was being brought in. Originally what I understood was going to happen was that we would all have our own identity cards,” Mr Howlin said.

“Originally the idea was that you would slot the card, as they do in the European Parliament, into the voting machine and that would activate the voting machine.

“The Whips got worried that TDs would turn up without their card and that they would lose close votes. They were afraid that some TDs would simply not be able to vote.”

He said the machines are already equipped for login cards.

Also the ‘Floating Voter’, he discusses the latest developments on Brexit and suggests the Labour Party will enter a coalition after the next election if they have the numbers.