World of Politics with Harry McGee

Last week, the HSE announced its programme for capital projects around the country. These are new hospital buildings, community clinics and specialist facilities.

The first thing an astute TD does when he sees the list is that he or she automatically focuses on their constituency, to see what is coming their way.

As quick as you’d blow out a candle, they will have a press release gone out, welcoming the news, noting the money that’s been earmarked for each project, reminding people that they have been campaigning long and hard for this very improvement in facilities.

Modesty prevents most of them from actually saying it. But the inference is always clear (and occasionally actually spelled out). It was partly by dint of their hard work and lobbying and pressure that this project finally got off the ground.

Well there’s modesty and then there is super-sized modesty.

Step forward, Barry Heneghan.

Heneghan, at 25, is one of the youngest TDs in the Dáil. He’s a sparky and chipper fellow, who has had possibly more media moments than any of the other twenty-something newcomers.

Barry is also the protégé of Finian McGrath, the Tuam-born politician who held a seat in that constituency, now called Dublin Bay North, for many years. Finian was also a super junior Minister in the 2016 to 2020, having tied in his lot with Shane Ross’s group of independent TDs.

Finian was a fair man for courting publicity himself. His two outstanding attributes as a politician was his commitment to disability rights (which never wavered) as well as his attention to his constituency.

He has never lost touch, either, with his North Galway roots, or the ‘Sham’ accent.

Anyway, Barry emerged last year as a natural successor to Finian’s seat. With his youthful ebullience and a slick social media presence, he first won a council seat in the summer and then followed it up with a spectacular win in the General Election in November.

He might be young, but he is strategic. And he is being mentored all the way along by the canny Finian.

As some will know, Barry was one of the eight members of the Regional Independent group which hammered out a deal with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for the programme for government. Only three of the eight were not promoted to ministerial office, which was fine.

Pictured: Barry Heneghan…the publicity conscious newcomer here from his run with Virgin Media’s reality show, Grá Ar An Tra.