'Mullingar is the jewel in the midlands crown'

Peter Burke made history in April when he became the first Mullingar person to be appointed to cabinet. The Westmeath Examiner's Rodney Farry recently caught up Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for a wide ranging chat.

How have your first few months as a cabinet minister been?

I think the first thing I felt was the sense of responsibility when I was appointed to cabinet, especially for my locality being the first minister to sit at cabinet with a full administrative portfolio. That’s a huge sense of responsibility. The second thing was that time was so limited when I was appointed. Obviously, it’s towards the end of the government’s lifetime. So you have to make every day a count, and that’s what I’m really trying to do, work as hard as I can every day to try to, obviously, discharge my national responsibility, which is very important to the country, but also locally to give Westmeath a fair shake.

That’s important, that when an area has a minister, that it is seen to count and is felt by people. So we’re doing our very best in that regard as well. But that does bring a huge sense of responsibility in a short timeframe.

Obviously no one knows what result the election will give, but trying to get things done at the end of the government is challenging, because the system almost slows us down. Even if it’s next February, whenever it is, the scope is narrow. So we’re trying to do as much as we can in the time we have.

It is a huge honour, though, and the air of expectation when you walk into the Cabinet Room for the first time is stark. And it really does hit you when you sit down in the seat.

Everyone has an assigned seat. You sit in the same seat for every single cabinet meeting. You see portraits of the founders of the state and the signatories to the proclamation on the way in. You think about the decisions that were made at the very birth of the state.

When you think of the magnitude of some of the decisions that were taken in that room, they’re stark. So there’s a huge historical context as well when you’re sitting in that chair. And my view is that you have to really use all the skills you’ve amassed and really work as hard as you can and do your best.

You have never hidden your ambition to hold a ministerial office.

Whatever role I have had, even when I was in the private sector, I have wanted to go as far as I can. When I walked in the doors of the Dáil Éireann, I wanted to be minister. It was clear in my mind that for my constituents, for the people who had trusted me to represent them in Dáil Éireann, I wasn’t going in there to sit back.

I threw myself into the national stage in the first couple of weeks doing national interviews. I remember that time, I thought: ‘We’re in a minority government, there’s not a lot of people here. I’m going to take advantage of that and try to show my skills and the work I could do.’

I remember at the start going on the airwaves, I was nervous. People were telling me: ‘You shouldn’t do it. You’re mad to go on Vincent Brown. You shouldn’t go near him’.

That’s what people were telling me and I ended up being on it at least every week or if not every second week.

I think the fact that I did push myself at the start probably made a big difference. I took that view, that I’m going to work hard, I’m going to go out there and show the work I’ve done.

That’s the narrow focus I operated through. I never had naked ambition. Many times people were picked over me in many different areas through life and my view was the next day to work harder.

I think fair, transparent ambition, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Apart from Leo Varadkar, Simon Harris and Paschal Donoghue, you have probably spent more time on TV and radio than any other Fine Gael politicians in the last decade.

I think being an accountant [is a factor]. If you can explain financial stuff and complicated matters, people almost see you as the first person to go to.

That’s probably what happened with the party a few times, particularly on budgetary matters and banking issues when they arose. Obviously, a lot of the time, the minister would be busy doing other things and explaining other areas, and there’d be a whole lot of slots to fill. The party would automatically come to me then because they were probably thinking they wanted someone competent to go on and explain these things.

That got me a huge amount of extra work, but to be honest with you, it brought a lot more stress too, because when you go on air, you absolutely have to have your homework done. You have to be prepared, because if you’re not, you’ll get caught out.

With such a large workload as a TD and especially now as a minister, it must be hard to find the right work, life balance.

It is hard. In this current job a lot of mornings I’m gone before six o’clock and I’m not home until 11 or 12 at night sometimes.

I’m aware that there’s so many people in Mullingar and other commuter towns that are doing just that. It still doesn’t make it easy for you.

It’s challenging when your life changes like that. Family life is hard in politics and it’s even harder now in modern politics. I think in the past when politicians were away, they were away, but when they came back, they were with their families. Nowadays, when you come back with your family, there’s so much other communication points, like your phone, that it’s just hard to put it down at times.

Social media is responsible for a lot of that. Now it’s good in many ways, we all use it. Politicians are the first to try and take advantage of it as well. But it is a double-edged sword.

The Taoiseach has said that the era of self-regulation for social media platforms is “well and truly over”. It’s about time, isn’t it?

It looks as if something needs to be done about what people can say. We have Coimisiún na Meán up and running now and their code of conduct for social media companies will be published soon. There are significant levies that they can apply to the social media companies that don’t comply with the code of conduct.

The worst of it is that people can go online with total anonymity. No one knows who they are and they say things and make statements about people that are factually untrue. That should not be allowed.

If you have something to say in life, you should always be able to put your name behind it, your identity, who you are and where you’re coming from.

That’s fair for everyone then, you know. But not doing that I think is a bit sinister.

People can say anything and unfortunately there is a view out there that when there’s a rumour about a politicians ‘there’s no smoke without fire’. It’s hard to defuse that then when it happens. So far, I’ve been lucky that I haven’t been victim of anything too serious.

Many people will disagree with politicians, many will disagree with what I do, what I stand for, but the ballot box is the place to demonstrate that difference of opinion. That’s the ultimate test for everyone.

I believe in fair debate. I have no issue with that, but everyone knows there’s a dignified level of which they shouldn’t go below.

You mentioned the ballot box. Fine Gael’s electoral prospects appear to be a lot better now since Simon Harris took over.

He’s put a huge amount of energy into the new portfolio, as Taoiseach. He’s making every day count. I was down in Tullow at the show with him recently and to see the energy he has going around is absolutely incredible. You could get a call or a text from Simon at any hour of the morning or night. He seems to be on 24-7.

I also think people empathise with him. He’s obviously comes from a humble background. He’s a family man, his wife’s a nurse, he has young children.

He’s received a lot of threats, horrendous things in the last couple of months that no one should ever have to go through, but he still is out there doing as much as he can.

I would never take too much account of polls or local election results, though. Things can change quickly, so I would never have them as a strict barometer. I’ve always felt that the government would have a fair shake of getting re-elected. I’d say it’s an even money chance.

What are the biggest differences between Leo Varadkar’s style of leadership and Simon Harris’s?

I’d say Leo is a shy person. A decent person, but naturally shy. If Simon walks into a room, he wants to go around everyone and shake their hands.

So I would liken Simon more to the Enda Kenny school of politics; a good chairperson of the cabinet, good at taking decisions. Simon is definitely strong at making a decision. Sometimes you have political leaders and politicians who will look for more data and try to drill down and have every single eye open on the table. In reality, you’ll never always get that. Sometimes you just have to take a decision, and the worst thing you can have is no decision.

Leo was an intellect, exceptionally bright. Travelling with him in Europe, at the European Council meetings, I would have seen on many occasions how much he was respected and it was definitely an advantage to our country.

He obviously took a decision that he could not bring any more to the table. He was all out in terms of everything, he had given everything that he felt he possibly could, and bear in mind he went through an extraordinary amount of abuse after he became Taoiseach, and probably before that too. A lot of politicians have just come to accept it. It’s almost part and parcel of the job now and one of the reasons parties struggle to get new candidates.

One of the biggest issues, if the not the biggest, over the last year has been immigration. With the way the world is at present migration is going to be a major issue in Ireland and other western countries for years to come.

Immigration is a complex situation. We need people coming to the country to keep our economy going. We have to potentially issue 40,000 work permits this coming year for people from outside Europe because their critical skills are needed.

We have put 400,000 jobs on the books since the eve of the pandemic. That shows you how much the economy is growing, and continuing to grow.

In the first instance, you have a lot of people wanting to come to a success story that has a growing economy, notwithstanding the massive challenges in housing and health that we face and that so many people face every single day. I absolutely hear and understand that and we’re trying to resolve it. But there’s a huge amount of people looking to come to Ireland.

If Ireland was a basket case, if it was a failed state, there’d be no one looking to come to Ireland. That’s the reality. And how we deal with that is a huge challenge.

We have about two per cent of our population Ukrainian citizens. That’s significant.

People sometimes take a simplistic view. You can’t just shut the airport and not let anyone in. That doesn’t work.

It difficult to return people and that’s what we’re trying to ensure now. People who don’t want anyone coming here were against the Asylum and Migration Pact, but that is the only vehicle to really give you the details of how people are getting here.

Secondly it also gives us the mechanism to return them to Europe because there’s no flights to Dublin from Botswana or some of the countries that a lot of people are coming from, Georgia or wherever. You can’t just charter a flight and fly into a country when you’ve no permission to do it. Some people have it as a simple solution.

There is a view that there would be less opposition to immigration if the housing crisis was solved.

If I’m here in a clinic, which I will be next Monday, 60 percent of the people who come in to me could be without housing.

Housing is a huge challenge, but I can equally say to you, look at Bells about to hopefully receive planning soon for the Ardmore Road, you have Harbour Meadows, where the Kellys are working away, you have Respond with 120 houses next to the nursing home.

Glenveagh is here delivering houses. They haven’t been here before, so it’s great to have large-scale units coming from those sort of quarters that can deliver them quickly.

However, we need to do so much more, and that’s just the reality. If you’re trying to get a GP or you’re trying to get on the property ladder to get a house and you’re not obtaining those things, which are just genuine family aspirations, people do unfortunately tend to blame others and migration does tend to be chief among those things.

People who go down that anti-immigration rabbit hole on social media will, through the algorithms, be fed stuff about anti-immigration constantly then. Once you start looking, they’ll keep throwing stuff at you.

That’s the same with the vaccinations through Covid. I know some good people, genuine, decent people who started going down that rabbit hole and just couldn’t get back. We have to tackle that through the commission.

If it’s not tackled, we’re going to be in a dangerous situation because it will corrode democracy. And that’s the reality.

Speaking of democracy, do the coalition partners work well together at cabinet? Does it get heated?

The mechanism they have now is that the three leaders meet on Monday night before cabinet meeting. They review the agenda. Anything that any of them are concerned about, they may potentially take it off the agenda to discuss it further.

That’s not to say you don’t have robust debate in cabinet. You do, but they try t avoid to significant slips. Before, when you would have coalitions that would have failed, you would have had a party leaving the Cabinet Room or not turning up for cabinet. Generally things are well signalled nowadays and the mechanisms are in place to try to resolve conflict before it gets too heated at cabinet.

I’d say relationships are good, but as you come to the end of the government, it gets more difficult and that’s only a fact of life.

The Green Party will want to demonstrate their ideology, Fianna Fáil likewise, and ourselves too. This budget probably will be more difficult because of that, but I have no doubt we’ll emerge through it.

Given the political instability in countries like the UK and the US, I think that a lot of people have a new found appreciation for Ireland’s elected representatives and how they conduct themselves.

Irish politicians are close to electorate, which is a good thing. I think that provides a good safety valve in that when things are going wrong locally, or people aren’t happy, you can feed that up along the line and hopefully give the national government a chance to respond to it.

Globally, we have the geopolitical uncertainty of wars, but trade is a big worry too. For example, at the moment, China has opened an investigation into our pigmeat over anti-competitive practices and policies. That’s because the EU put a tariff on China on their electric vehicles and just before that, the US put a 100 percent tariff on China’s electric vehicles.

That’s the biggest [threat to the economy]. The thing that will cost Ireland more money is de-globalisation, because we’re an island economy, we need trade to function. We need to ensure that we’re not getting involved in tit-for-tat trade wars and subsidy races. That would be a big concern.

It’s hard to predict what the next five years will bring. From the day I got elected to the Dáil, we’ve gone through Brexit, a global pandemic, the first war on mainland Europe in a generation, and the inflationary crisis that came directly as a result, at least partially, of the war in Ukraine. These are once in a generation-type events.

No government get everything right, there are always going to be challenges, and they’re going to be significant. I believe, however, that if the government got the response to any of those items wrong, we would be feeling the effects of it now, and it would be drastic.

For example, we see with inflation, it’s gone below two per cent. Still, prices are going up, absolutely, but it’s not where it was at eight per cent. That shows you that policies are working.

Now, that doesn’t make it any easier for someone who is getting up tomorrow morning, worried about meeting their rent bill, which has increased, or wondering if they will ever get a chance to attain homeownership in this country.

We have to try to give people in our localities hope that they absolutely will, and that those houses are coming down the tracks, and are being built around their communities.

We have to display that to them and hopefully people will stick with us. But, you know, the great thing about democracy is that people have the freedom to make up their own choice.

How is Mullingar doing, do you think?

The town has changed a lot in the past decade. When I bring someone to town and I have done this a lot, especially in this department, people say to me: ‘My God, that’s a great town’.

Some provincial towns are under a lot of pressure, but Mullingar has proved resilient.

People are opening up new businesses. When I was running for re-election the last time, we were trying to get Curraghmore school up and running. Look at it now. Look at the two beautiful schools on the C-Link beside O’Brien’s garage, Saplings and Gaelscoil An Choillín.

You go over to St Finian’s and you’ve got a massive new extension going ahead. You’ve another new school, St Mary’s Special School, being built next to it. Loreto has got significant extensions, and hopefully St Mary’s will be on the road soon and getting on the building programme as well.

A huge amount of inroads have been made in infrastructure. I know you can always look at the problems, but there are good things happening, and that’s one of the things I think sometimes we take for granted. There are good things happening out there, and you know, in terms of the works done on roadways and walkways and the greenways, we have so much to offer in Mullingar.

I think we’re really the jewel in the crown in the midlands, and I absolutely know it’s only going to get better.