Carlow sugar factory closure was 'low point' for TD

DEPARTING THE DÁIL: MJ NOLAN is against the abolition of the Seanad. The Fianna Fáil Carlow-Kilkenny TD believes it should be used instead to enhance government capability through outside expertise.

The taoiseach appoints 11 of the Seanad’s 60 members and a senator may serve in any cabinet position except as taoiseach, tánaiste or minister for finance. Nolan thinks “five, six or even seven” members of cabinet could be outside experts appointed from the Seanad.

Isn’t that a vote of no confidence in his colleagues? “It isn’t. It’s giving the option to an incoming taoiseach that if he finds outside expertise that could be used in an executive capacity to benefit the government, he should have that facility.”

He has personal knowledge of how the Upper House operates having served two short periods as senator in 1982 and in 2002. A public representative since 1974, he was elected a TD in 1982 and held the seat until 1997, winning it back in 2002.

He turns 60 this month and acknowledges there is no chance Fianna Fáil will keep three seats in the five-seater constituency. Boundary revisions put parts of Carlow into the Wicklow constituency and he believes that “after this election all five TDs could be in Kilkenny and that’s not healthy”. With no chance of retaining the seat, it was still a difficult decision personally to stand down. “I felt for my supporters who had worked for previous elections.”

In 1991 he was one of the “gang of four” with Noel Dempsey, Seán Power and Liam Fitzgerald, who voiced opposition to then party leader and taoiseach Charles Haughey. “It was traumatic at the time,” he says of the episode.

“The four of us were uneasy about certain things that were happening within the party. I would have been of the view that a number of members of the party were in fear of the leadership and the only way to do something about it was through some strength of numbers.”

The four TDs put their names to a statement against Mr Haughey. All four came in for serious local and national criticism. But “we issued the statement in September, Charlie resigned some months afterwards and Albert [Reynolds] took over”.

Looking back at the role of a TD since he started in 1982, he says “there has been a sea change”. There was far more contact with the personal problems of constituents at a time when “clinics were all the rage”.

The “nature of problems has changed as well in that there is a far more astute and far better educated electorate who know their rights and entitlements”.

Looking back on his time as a TD, he is happy that “I’ve made a contribution to the Carlow end of the constituency specifically in the areas of investment in education” and in infrastructure.

But a major low point was the closure of the Carlow sugar factory. “As a constituency TD I felt I had absolutely no control over such a decision.”