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LABOUR PARTY TD Sean Sherlock has said he will run in the Cork North-Central constituency or not run at all in the next election, following an overhaul in Dáil constituencies this week.
The new Electoral Commission published a report on Wednesday recommending that 14 more TDs be added, ,bringing the total number to 174, to represent the growing population.
Cork North-Central is to get an extra seat, to make a total of five representatives.
Three divisions in the Mallow area, which Sherlock currently represents, with a population of 14,408 will transfer from Cork East.
Speaking to Patricia Messinger on C103′s Cork Today Show, Sherlock said: “The decision is not whether I run in Cork East or Cork North Central, I think the decision now is whether you run at all or run in Cork North Central, and I’d be pretty honest about that.
“What I’m trying to grapple with at the moment is whether or not there is actually a future for me in politics, and I’ll just be very honest with people about that.”
Sherlock said it feels like “years and years of work” put in by himself and his late father “is just literally gone in one fell swoop”.
“I could never run in a constituency that I don’t live in, I live in the town of Mallow, my family home, my family is in Mallow, I would have to stay with Mallow no matter what,” he said.
“There is that sense of loss of the Cork East part of the constituency,” the Labour TD said.
“I’m just outlining it in very human terms that … I’m in the middle now of trying to grapple with the enormity of the decision, but I have to put things into perspective, perspective means that there are so many people out there who have to grapple with far more challenges than I have to grapple with.”
Sherlock said he had not considered not running in the next election prior to the Electoral Commission report.
“The fire was in the belly and the fire is still in the belly to keep going,” he said.
However, noting that he has a young family, Sherlock said: “What it would mean is literally starting out again in a whole new territory where you’re trying to form relationships, build up a body of work in such a short space of time, and that challenge is a massive undertaking.”
He said that would mean being out “all hours” to try to do that.
The Labour TD said he will consult with his colleagues and again with his family, adding that “family is the biggest component of this”.
Sherlock said he hasn’t thought about what he would do if he leaves politics.
“There’s just a little bit of time to be taken to consider all of the options. We’ve a long way to go before any decision is made.”
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Excellent as always. The highlight of The Journal week.
I wonder how the learned professor would have visualised that great Irish expression “I will in me hole”?
@jamesdecay: or you will in your arse
@John Kelly: or even just ” I will, yah”
@John Kelly: or better still “The high hole of me arse”
@jamesdecay: I like to think he’d respond with “ask me bollix”…
Saw a poster for a play today called “colleen bawn”
@Ciarán FitzGerald: The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault (what a name!). First produced in about 1870-80.
The sad fact is that Gaelic languages are, like Latin, fast becoming classical ones.
As anything modern arrives, a new word in Irish languages, based on English, needs to be invented. For example, while we had Irish for wheel (‘roth’), when the bicycle and motor car arrived, there were no Irish words for them… So we invented ‘Rothar’ and ‘Gluaisteán’, both of which have evolved into Hiberno/English as ‘bicical’ and carr mótar.
Darragh wrote an interesting article a few weeks ago on Irish for computer terms.
Béider go mór fada me a dhéin mé ar mo ‘vice-ical’. (“It might be better I ger’ on me bike”).
@Canny Jem: Car is a word of Celtic origin, so no harm in using that.
The tyranny of the Irish Education beat Gaeilge into us on one side and bet our local Hiberno English dialects out of them on the other
@Joe Clery:
Can’t say that was my experience.
The teachers we had over the years had every Hib dialect going – staff rooms must have been like Babel!
@Joe Clery: I agree with Michael Kavanagh. Not my experience either. Despite being born in Dublin of my Dubliner parents not having but a smattering of Irish, I learned Irish quickly in infants school and developed it more in Primary School. It was not an all-Irish school, like Coláiste Mhuire in Parnell Sq was.
I did most of my school exams in Irish (except for Physics, Chemistry, English, French and Latin classes) and spoke it very fluently with my fellow school pals daily in the schoolyard, on the sports fields and even on the streets. My highest score in Leaving Cert was in Irish, very nearly failed English, French and Latin!
My wife was also a Dubliner, a fluent Irish speaker and her parents didn’t have much Irish either. We often spoke in Irish abroad on holidays together, like having a secret code language amongst foreign people.
Sadly, after school I had little use for Irish and am now rusty on it, yet still can follow the news in Irish on radio and tv. BTW, TG4 has some of the best programmes that have English subtitles for “Engerlanders”.
What about that God-awful translation of ‘go n’eirigh an bothar leat’ to ‘ may the road rise with you’ so beloved of souvenir shops in places like Killarney?
Just wait another 5 years or so for the next batch of immigrants planned coming from Sudan and Somalia. We will be hearing even less Hiberno English.
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