WE MAY BE well over a year into the 34th Dáil at this stage, but with a record number of first-time TDs elected in 2024, there are still plenty left to hear from. 

Over the last few months, The Journal has been sitting down with some of the new TDs in Leinster House in an effort to help you get to know them and to find out what they make of being a TD so far. 

Last time around, we heard from Social Democrats TD for Kildare North, Aidan Farrelly, who spoke about how being thrust into the national spotlight was not quite what he expected. 

This week, we’ve caught up with Fine Gael’s newest TD for Dublin Rathdown, Maeve O’Connell. 

A long-time Fine Gael activist, O’Connell first entered electoral politics herself in 2019 when she was elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council.

O’Connell is a barrister by training and before entering Leinster House was a lecturer in law and governance at Technological University Dublin.

The Stillorgan native is married to Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy, making them the only couple of the 34th Dáil. 

Is it what you expected?

“I don’t think anything can prepare you for Leinster House, because it’s not like any other job or role that you will have done before.

“And I mean, I trained as a lawyer, I worked in multinational enterprises, I was in academia before I got elected, and I think all of that helped prepare me for it, but it’s still quite a steep learning curve,” O’Connell said. 

Reflecting on her introduction to politics, O’Connell explained that, growing up, her parents were both Fine Gael party members, and politics was “always the dinner time conversation”.

It was also through the party that O’Connell met her husband. 

On what it is like having two TDs in the house, O’Connell admits that it was a bit strange initially, but joked:

“It is quite helpful, though, knowing where my husband is at times.

“And this did come in useful once, when there was a vote on, I knew he hadn’t been answering my text, and I said, ‘Well, I know he’s going to have to be there at half two, so he’ll have to talk to me then’.

“Not many couples get to be able to say that about each other.” 

For years, O’Connell had worked on the election campaigns of friends and family in Fine Gael, but it was the rapid expansion of Stillorgan and changes in her own locality that made her decide to eventually throw her own hat in the ring. 

Then, having spent five years as a councillor, it was when Josepha Madigan, one of Fine Gael’s two sitting TDs in Dublin Rathdown (Neale Richmond being the other), announced that she would not be contesting the 2024 general election that O’Connell chose to try her hand at national politics. 

“Having worked on a lot of these local issues, I realised that there was a lot you can do at a local level, but an awful lot of these things were being driven by national policy. And the way to influence national policy is to be at the national table,” O’Connell said. 

In terms of her priorities for this Dáil term, O’Connell said housing is the big issue. 

This includes facilitating more “right-sizing” for older constituents in Dublin Rathdown.

Transport is the second issue O’Connell highlighted as a priority. 

“A lot of people travel through our constituency to get to town, but we’re the people who are living in it. We need to make sure that those changes on transport actually support our transport objectives within Dublin Rathdown, and not just the people who are passing through,” she said.

Looking ahead to the coming years, O’Connell has no plans to leave politics any time soon.

When asked if she would like to become a minister, or perhaps leader of Fine Gael someday, she responded: 

“Well, as is always pointed out, nobody runs without hoping to get made Taoiseach someday, because you never know how life is going to evolve.

“But I’m certainly very happy with where I am, and looking forward to trying to make changes.

“If the opportunity presents itself, as I always say, and Simon [Harris] comes knocking on my door and wants to make me a minister, I wouldn’t dream of saying no.

“I mean, you can’t say no to the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste if they ask you.”

Peak and pit

What has been her highlight since becoming a TD? 

“One of my first highlights was when I chaired the first Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting,” O’Connell said.

“As somebody who was only elected a couple of months, being in the position where I got to decide who put questions to the Tánaiste, and got to decide when our ministers had spoken for too long and to allow members to ask questions, was a great opportunity to have.”

What has been the low point? 

“As I mentioned earlier, I come from a very Fine Gael family, and one of the highlights for us as a family was when I was able to organise for my dad to come to Leinster House and meet Enda Kenny when he was Taoiseach.

“It was a very emotional day for my dad, and he then got sick last year, in the summer, and it was a difficult few months, and then he passed in November.

“So that’s very much been my lowlight of the year.  But I am very grateful and delighted that he did get to see me elected to Leinster House.” 

Any surprises about being a TD?

“One of the things that surprised me is we had the whole speaking rights row at the start, which was just bizarre. 

“It wasn’t what I was expecting. I think all of us newbies were in a bit of shock at the ferocity of it.

“Our more experienced colleagues were saying, ‘No, it’s not normally like this’ and we didn’t know any better, so we were just [saying] ‘Oh, my God, this is all a bit bonkers’,” O’Connell said. 

She added: “And now, 15 months on, there’s plenty of opportunities to speak, so I’m sort of going, what was that?

“And the other thing I would say, I think, is very positive, is that there is a great collegiality in there. Yes, we’re all competing with each other. Yes, we all have different positions. But at the same time, even across parties, people will stop and talk to and listen to you…and vice versa.

“So I think that’s very important for our democracy, that that is there and that we say that to people.” 

Final musings

“I didn’t get to mention my dog. That’s very crappy of me, I must always get to mention my dog in the course of interviews,” O’Connell said. 

O’Connell has often spoken about her love of dogs and has dedicated a significant portion of her time as a TD to issues impacting animal welfare.

One change she is trying to get implemented is to tighten the regulations around dog breeding and selling. 

“The way I always look at it, I can go down and I can buy a second-hand car, and I can spend five or six thousand euro, and I know that’s not a lot of money for a car, but I know it’ll work.

“I know it’ll be roadworthy, because thems the rules. I also know everybody else on the road’s car is roadworthy etc, because thems the rules, and if they break the rules, there’s significant penalties.

“We can confidently go out into the road that way. You can’t do that by paying €5,000 for a purebred dog, you don’t have any of those securities, and yet, you’re bringing a sentient creature into your family and bringing it out in public. So that seems to me quite, quite crazy.”

• You can read our interviews with other new TDs in the 34th Dáil here.