*Violet-Anne Wynne. Photograph: Martin Connolly
UNIQUE as the county’s only female TD, Violet-Anne Wynne (IND) was also inimitable when it came to the conclusion of The Clare Echo’s four-part series sitting down with Clare’s representatives in Dáil Éireann.
Deputy Wynne was the only one of the four TDs to bring an advisor with her to the interview. Her parliamentary assistant, Mike Taylor was seated beside the TD for the entirety of our conversation at The Old Ground Hotel.
Such an occurrence is unusual and rare when it comes to interviews, especially in the local media.
Explaining her rationale for bringing her PA, Deputy Wynne stated, “I suppose I asked Mike was he interested in attending. I think in some ways, it’s just we were working together in the office and it just seemed appropriate to bring Mike, that’s really it, there’s nothing more to it”.
“With COVID we wouldn’t have had many opportunities for even this interaction to take place, so I don’t have a lot to go off of. But yes, I would bring Mike along to a lot of meetings that I have. Now, that’s for two reasons. One, so is that anything that I might not remember, Mike will remember or else anything else that I have said that I am going to do he’s there to remember to take note of it and all of this stuff but that is the working relationship we have”.
When Deputy Wynne was asked what her relationship was like with fellow female politicians in the county, Taylor chirped up with his views on the question, “that’s one I don’t think you’d ask a male member”.
Exactly a year to the date of our interview which took place on Monday, Wynne’s PA called for her resignation. He tweeted, “the circus that has unfolded in Clare over the last two years since the Deputy was elected has completely distracted from the serious issues at hand in the constituency. Another day another sideshow, two years of ridicule. The best thing now would be for the Deputy to step aside”.
This stance was previously covered by The Clare Echo at the time of the Kilkee man’s appointment in November, at the time Violet-Anne said they hadn’t discussed the incident. The duo were both unsuccessful candidates in the Kilrush electoral area in the 2019 local elections.
They have yet to have a conversation on the call for her resignation in the intervening three months. “It is a distraction away from the work, if we were to sit down and have a good aul chinwag, it would take a good conversation to have a chat about it,” she said while Mike gave his input, “we haven’t found the time”.
Violet-Anne added, “That is not me just saying that, it is 100 percent the truth, we’re just always trying to cover an issue that we haven’t yet covered because there is so many there, that is all we actually get time for”.
She didn’t believe that the failure to address it left an elephant in the room. “I don’t think either of us would like to work with an elephant in the room, I’m of the opinion that I’m big enough and bold enough to understand that I was just like Mike before becoming a public representative, highly critical and scrutinising but rightly so, as a public representative it is what people are supposed to do and also media may have had a part to play in all of that as well, articles were put out about myself and my family that we know now are different, I think the media had a huge role to play in painting me in a certain way or my family, sensationalising things, anyone who gets to interact, meet or talk with me has a whole different opinion. Myself and Mike may have seen each other at Kilrush Mental Health community meetings, we never had the opportunity to have proper discussions, now that we have, I’ve realised and never discussed this, I’ve realised where we have the exact same desires and wants for Clare, it is quite shocking”.
Taylor added, “peel it back and it’s all about common ground, in politics you can get so concerned about Ministries being appointed here and things going on there, visits here but if you don’t have access to the basic services like houses and healthcare, somethings are above party politics, a county that you sometimes look around and see people dying on their feet because they are completely abandoned, that is a bigger issue to climb over than whatever would have been tweeted exactly a year ago”.
