With Healy Raes in power, we might get an event centre now

English people who move to Ireland often arrive with preconceived ideas of what the locals are like.

The Irish are quick to try to dispel any such misconceptions - visions of bog-trotting ‘Paddy’ with a drink in his hand and a song on his tongue are hopelessly outdated, we are told - if they ever existed at all.

This was certainly the case when I moved to Ireland in 2001, when the country was in the process of reinventing itself. The Celtic Tiger was roaring, and Ireland was projecting itself as a modern, thrusting nation at the pulsing heart of a liberal and inclusive Europe.

It was a vision my Irish partner and her family, and my new colleagues here in Cork, seemed keen to embrace. Old Ireland, the Ireland of shamrocks and pubs, leprechauns and diddly-eye, a genius quote about to trip off the tongue... that was all dead and gone, it was with O’Leary in the grave.

Or so they said.

Then, one day, I saw on the TV news a guy called Jackie Healy Rae in full flow in the Dáil, and I thought, ‘Ha, now that’s the Ireland I was sold. So it does exist!’

The Kerry TD was like a caricature, a ghost of Ireland’s recent past come to life.

Belying the results of the work by that student in the recent Young Scientist Exhibition, Jackie had a big red Irish head on him, with a green tartan hat squashed over it.

He was dressed in fine clothes, but still managed to look like he had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

This guy was straight out of Central Casting.

And, of course, he had the gift of the gab.

One quote of his at the time stuck in my memory, when he was standing up for the downtrodden of his native county: “Some people coming to me are so poor that they couldn’t buy a jacket for a gooseberry.”

He was adept at separating his constituents from those up above in Dublin, once remarking: “The people I represent generally eat their dinner in the middle of the day.”

This Jackie guy was a hoot, I thought, mad as a box of frogs, but a cute hoor too. This was the Ireland I wanted to believe still existed, one that wasn’t in the slick EU-funded brochures!

How Jackie must have made all those people who had been desperately portraying a ‘new Ireland’ cringe in embarrassment.

He was the start of a Healy Rae Dáil dynasty in Kerry that continues today with his sons Michael and Danny - for almost 30 years, the family have been a vote-catching phenomenon.

Like their father, the brothers win over voters, not just through their colourful, outspoken personalities - that kind of shtick can soon wear thin - but because they actually have a reputation for getting things done.

One story about Michael Healy Rae has long stuck in my memory.

A Cork family were having trouble accessing services when one of their relatives was fighting cancer. Their pleas to their local representatives were falling on deaf ears, so, out of desperation, they wrote to Michael.

Even though this was far away from his constituency, the TD was a great help to the family in their hour of need, providing advice, and sending his condolences to them when the relative sadly died.

There was nothing in it for him, bar the chance to help a family in need who had reached out to him, but that was enough.

We need politicians with boundless energy who who achieve targets and get things done to be rewarded. That is why I was delighted that the Healy Raes this week entered government for the first time, ing a raft of other Independents along with the big beasts of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The cute Kerry clan have a long track record of success, and I don’t see why their native county should be the only place to benefit from that can-do attitude.

The Programme for Government released this week contains plenty of ambition and aspiration, but little in the way of specifics.

Even the very recent Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar pointed to its use of vague words like ‘consider’, ‘assess’, ‘examine’, ‘progress’, ‘explore’, and ‘review’ when he critiqued it this week.

We need people in government who will cut through all this political jargon and pie-in-the-sky and get stuff done - and my hope is that a dose of Healy Rae energy will help to achieve a few things.

For all the powerful TDs that have represented Cork in recent decades, Leesiders still have a sense that we get nothing down here compared to up in Dublin - and across in Kerry for that matter.

The event centre is a case in point.

Can you imagine if Enda Kenny ( him?) had cut that first sod on an event centre in Kilgarvan instead of Cork city almost nine years ago, back in February, 2016?

Would the Healy Raes have allowed it to drag on for 3,270 days, and counting?

Would they hell, like!

Putting them in charge of that white elephant, to give just one example, might just be what is needed to get the damn project done and dusted in the lifetime of the new government.

And if that causes red faces among the current crop of Cork TDs, then so be it.

Ireland’s body politic appears to be a place where everything moves at a glacial pace - and even then often not in the right direction.

If those Kerry fellas can cut through all the bull and get results - then more power to the Healy Raes, I say.

The new Taoiseach Micheál Martin is a shrewd cookie, and some observers say his decision to invite the brothers to pee from inside the tent may well act in Fianna Fáil’s best interests when it comes to the next election.

Kerry was long a Fianna Fáil stronghold until Jackie left that party which he had represented in local politics, and was elected as an Independent. A dose of government might just swing votes away from the Healy Raes towards Fianna Fáil, goes the thinking.

Somehow, I don’t see that playing out.

The Kerry clan will always look after No.1 first - and that’s the people who put No.1s for them on their ballot papers.

On a national stage, it will be fascinating to see if they can replicate that success.

If they do, then come the next election, I reckon we can ask the Healy Raes to get us that tram service in Cork city. After all, one will probably be servicing Kilgarvan by then...