A few months after the 2011 election, a text would pop up once or twice a week on the screens of a group of 12 Fine Gael TDs.
“Five-a-side game tonight. 8pm,” it read.
The “game” would not take place on the pitches at UCD or in Ringsend in Dublin but the salubrious surroundings of the Cellar Bar of the Merrion Hotel or an upstairs room of a bar on South Anne Street.
The five-a-side were a group of newly elected TDs, some of them young, all of them male. In a party with an all-time high representation of 76 deputies, being a backbencher could be a dispiriting exercise.
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The group was formed in secret and met in secret to discuss policy, long-term strategy and indeed long-term ambitions. Leader Enda Kenny heard of them through then minister for the environment Phil Hogan, who was the taoiseach’s ears on the ground. Despite an admonishment from Kenny that there was “no room for five-a-side football” in Fine Gael, the group persisted, with the Dublin Bay South TD Eoghan Murphy seen as its leader. Why would they stop, they thought. Were they not the future of the party?
Twelve years later, those who once considered themselves the future of the party have largely become its past. Galway West TD Brian Walsh did not stand in 2016. Paul Connaughton of Galway East, Noel Harrington of Cork South West, Tony Lawlor of Kildare North and Sean Conlan of Cavan-Monaghan all lost their seats in the 2016 election. Pat Deering of Carlow-Kilkenny and Seán Kyne of Galway West lost their seats in 2020. (Kyne is now a Senator.)
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Murphy, the former minister for housing resigned suddenly as a TD in 2020 saying it was a “personal decision”. The morning after his resignation he said it had nothing to do with the fact that he had not been selected as a minister in the new government. He admitted that he had found the challenge of the housing brief “tough” and he had been left frustrated with bureaucratic hurdles. In a sign of growing disillusionment with politics, he said he could not justify taking a large salary for a job to which he was no longer 100 per cent committed.
That has left only two of the original 12 Fine Gael freshmen deputies from 2011: Martin Hayden from Kildare North and Brendan Griffin of Kerry. As the next election is held, it will fall to one TD defending his seat. Hayden is a Minister of State and is likely to seek re-election. Early this year, Griffin said he would retire from politics at the next election. The Kerry TD is 41, which most people would consider as mid-career at most.
“It goes to show just how quickly people in modern politics kind of come and go,” said Griffin. “The rate of turnover is very high in the last three elections. Politicians have become more disposable.”
The departures point to the vagaries of a profession that was always, by its nature, unstable. But it also points to another phenomenon: male career politicians giving up their profession with no obvious prompts.
For Griffin, there were a number of factors behind his decision. As a former junior minister, the first was to do with his hopes of becoming Chief Whip being dashed. “If I had got the job in Cabinet, I would have stayed on. But when I did not get it, I said to myself, this is the sign I have been waiting for,” he said.
He had been mulling the decision to quit for years.
“Even as far back as 2019, it was in the back of my mind that it was not an ideal work-life balance,” he says.
For Griffin, it was an opportunity “to spend time with my family”.
Being based in west Kerry, Griffin is 300km from Dáil Éireann. On Monday to Thursday he is in Dublin and spends a lot of his time over the weekend criss-crossing his large constituency. He has little time to see his family. He calculated that if he stands next term his children will be 17 and 15 by the time that term ends and he will have missed out on their childhoods by spending all his time in Dublin.
Like so many of his contemporaries, it was the Covid lockdown that was the trigger for him.
“Covid was the free sample. You never normally got to live at home permanently. It was the first time since the children were born that I wasn’t away from the house at night-time continuously. I liked just having a normal family life. It gave me a sneak preview into what life might actually look like,” he said.
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It wasn’t just the five-a-side group who left. A slew of mid-career male politicians, mostly connected to Fine Gael, have retired or will soon retire. They are in their 40s or early 50s. Many don’t have anything else lined up. They have included Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway), Joe McHugh (Donegal) and, most recently, John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny).
There are many factors at play but the most minor are the fortunes of their parties or any prospects of electoral defeat. Some are, indeed, to do with thwarted ministerial ambition.
Other reasons relate to growing disillusionment with politics in general. But mostly, they are the very same reasons prominent women politicians have left the profession. The demands of the job have become too onerous. Social media has contributed to an increasingly venomous and partisan attitude. The concept of work-life balance does not exist – they end up watching their kids grow up from a distance.
“Covid has a lot to answer for,” says the Donegal TD Joe McHugh who has spent 25 years, half his life, in politics. “There was a lot of soul searching during Covid. Like a lot of people, I had spent a lot of time away from home until then. Covid gave me an insight into a very different world.”
The generation of politicians who are leaving are different from the generation who preceded them. Unlike many of their fathers, they want to be centrally involved in their children’s lives. For some, the constant torrent of abuse and trolling has also had an effect, a factor that particularly played a role in Murphy’s quitting.
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“I have got vile abuse,” says Brendan Griffin. “I don’t let it affect [me] though. It wouldn’t have been a factor in terms of my decision. It’s one of the cons of the job at the same time.”
That, for others, might have tilted the balance.
“Some people get upset and distressed. Sometimes politicians get piled on and it’s really nasty when it does happen,” he says.
For most, it is clear that politics is not what it once was. Negatives outweigh the positives.
Griffin has written two children’s novels and is trying to work on a third but has no time to write. Denis Naughten has spoken about returning to science. He was doing a PhD when he was first elected to national politics at the age of 24.
Many of those leaving have come to the view there are more interesting and fulfilling challenges out there than politics. For them, politics, in short, has become a profession that is all risk and no reward, professionally and personally.
For them that five-a-side ball burst a long time ago.
