Green Party general election candidate, Senator Róisín Garvey has said she is trying to engage with the electorate in Clare in different ways during the current general election campaign, in the hope that more people will become politically aware.
This election is her second bite at the cherry having run for the Dáil in 2020 when she was a county councillor. Four and a half years on, she is now a senator and Deputy Leader of the Green Party, and believes she is campaigning for a seat in Clare from a position of strength and that her track record in the Oireachtas will benefit her this time around.
Speaking to The Clare Champion this week, Senator Garvey said she wants to get elected on her merits. “I saw a side of politics that I didn’t like observing from the outside for many years; that everybody was claiming they did everything themselves…so I want to get elected on my merits.”
She questions what some politicians have actually achieved, and feels there is a lot of talk in politics about things councillors, TDs and senators plan to do or want to do, and that there is much pretence about achieving things for communities when in fact another politician has achieved it.
The senator says she is currently doing a lot of work through her social media accounts to promote positive initiatives the Green Party were instrumental in bringing in to inform people how to avail of them.
She cites the example of grants like the Croí Cónaithe scheme which are readily available but people don’t always know, and so she actively highlights such schemes. Over 1000 homes in Clare have applied for Croí Cónaithe to date with over 300 having already availed of the fund. The €50m national fund to refurbish vacant properties for residential use is aligned to the Town Centre First policy put forward by the Green Party.
She believes it is also important to listen to people, so to learn about the various issues that are impacting on their lives.
“Then if you are a public representative you have to represent the public, and the thing is, life is too short to just be doing things for the craic pretending you are getting stuff done. That’s a waste of a life. If I didn’t feel like I could achieve something, I wouldn’t bother with politics,” she maintains.
“The thing for me is there is the way it’s always done which is going to funerals and kissing babies whereas I have done different things like ‘Gigs for Garvey’, and I am doing a flash mob on the streets of Ennis in a few weeks time because people like to dance as well.
“I mean do we not have the right to change politics and make it more accessible to people? And then if you reach people who like dancing or like going to gigs, and who find politics boring and going to hustings boring and find debate boring; we need to engage people in other ways so that is why I am trying other ways to engage with people. Then once you engage with them, they become politically aware.”
She cites this year’s local election when 55% of the electorate voted in Clare as an example of the public’s disenchantment with politics.
“That’s 45% of people who felt so disengaged with politics that they didn’t bother voting.” She believes that politics as it is currently done is a factor in poor electoral turnout which is unfair on the people that don’t vote because they don’t have a voice then. “I think we need to speed up the pace at which we need to change things, for the better and for everybody,” she says.
As election campaigning stepped up a notch last Friday when the 33rd Dáil and Seanad finished, the Inagh senator organised a ‘Get out the vote’ event at the weekend in Ennistymon with the help of the young Greens who are supporting her in her pursuit of a Clare seat.
She is keen to focus on getting people to register to vote, to actually vote, and to realise that Friday, November 29 is polling day.
At the same time, she believes that the language around politics and elections is off-putting for some with words like polling, hustings and ballot making no sense to people who don’t know what such words even mean.
She also thinks that sometimes politicians and the media are in a “political bubble” and don’t understand what the populace think.
“And that’s why canvassing is great, just going to community fairs and farmers’ markets and lots of events likes that and listening to people, and you realise that what they are thinking about is very different to what we are thinking about. And that is really important, and luckily I am very sociable – I’ve always enjoyed going to different events and meeting different people.”
Sharon Dolan D’Arcy covers West Clare news. After completing a masters in journalism at University of Galway, Sharon worked as a court reporter at the Sligo Weekender. She was also editor of the Athenry News and Views.