Dublin West

Michael.

I keep it mixing up the name, Michael from West Dublin.

And who else was there? John Caulfield, right? So, they were the two power tables.

And Theresa Malley from Mid West, she was doing the walking around and-

Patricia Stevenson is a Social Democrat Senator.

Roderick O'Gorman is a TD for the Green Party in Dublin West and their leader.

And Eimear Macaulay is News Correspondent with The Journal.

You have the numbers 51551 as I say to you.

The conditions were terrible.

So we always voted for the Labour, the Workers' Party in Dublin West, where Taller is.

And so I wanted to frame that as an explanation.

You're not talking to a union buster here, somebody that has some inclination that unions are bad, certainly where I didn't start in that.

Well, a lot more visitors because they come from all over, increasingly from abroad, but all over Ireland.

You know, they come from Dublin West and the West.

We don't have many from Cork.

I think Cork has so much music of its own, doesn't have time to go anywhere else, you know.

Um, and it's, it's based in Dublin.

Actually, it's based in Dublin West in, in the early...

Or sorry, the late '80s.

Um, and then it moves forward to now times and, um, but it's done in the style of, like, Homer's Odyssey or something like a-

In our own-

And so the-

It's based in our own Dublin West, is it?

Uh, well, it's not based in any one particular-

So we were putting pressure on politicians and councillors because of their vote, and they were really feeling it.

There was a by-election in Dublin West, and Joe Higgins, who was involved in the campaign in West Dublin, nearly took the seat, and it caused an enormous political shock, if you like, and then the question was posed, well, look, we're putting these people in power, if you like, under pressure, but really we should be kind of stepping into the breach ourselves to to play a role there and then the campaign decided to stand people in the following general election where I did pretty well on a first outing.

Yeah, and I suppose it was an unusual area for a kind of what would be, as you say, perceived as a hard left person standing.

north county dublin is it's changed a lot since that time but it was kind of semi-rural it has some of the most affluent parts of the country in it malahide and so on would have been socio-economically one of the better off areas and they wouldn't have necessarily been attracted to a hardline uh lefty but i suppose it was really patient work in the community over years people got to know me got to know what i stood for that i eventually ended up getting elected because uh It took quite some time, but yeah, I mean, I don't see it as hard left.

That's what you want to do.

But you're a TD for Dublin West, so you will know about Bus Connects.

And Eamon Ryan, who we mentioned a moment ago, said the previous government agreed that eight new routes would be built and they'd be built at four at a time.

And your government is building them at two at a time.