FORMER FINE GAEL Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has said that he knew he needed to leave office when “the homelessness figures hit 10,000″.
Murphy was appearing on RTÉ Radio 1′s Claire Byrne programme to discuss his memoir, ‘Running from Office: Confessions of Ambition and Failure in Politics’.
The former TD for Dublin Bay South – who was first elected in 2011 to the now abolished Dublin South-East constituency – explained some of the factors going into his stepping back from ministerial duties and complete exit from the political sphere, including a difficult struggle with mental health.
“I always talk about it as panic attacks,” he said. “I definitely had some moments of crisis, where I lost control, to such a degree that it scared me, and so I knew I needed to leave politics as quickly as possible.”
Murphy occupied a number of committee positions that contributed to his rise to a ministerial position, including the Public Accounts Committee in 2011, and subsequently the Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis, the report of which he co-authored in 2016.
He served as Minister for State at both the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure under Enda Kenny, and subsequently as Minister for Housing under Leo Varadkar.
Of addressing the mental health challenges that he was experiencing at the time he said: “I was embarrassed about it.”
“I felt that I should have been more resilient, I felt that ‘I’m a politician, this an important role, so I’ve just got to toughen up’. But I also felt ashamed about it because the problems that I was dealing with…paled in comparison to what people were actually going through.”
Murphy said that the public nature of the role posed serious problems for him, which led to him “struggling to leave the office” at times.
“For the people you’re public property, and I found it very difficult as my profile rose and people would come up wanting to talk to me, to navigate that. And then as time went on and I started to get more unpopular, all that was amplified by the media and social media,” he said.
He also touched on a deteriorating relationship with then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, resistance in government to his housing plans while minister, and the Dáil bar.
“The Dáil bar is the fulcrum of political life,” he said.
“Eventually three o’clock becomes four o’clock, four o’clock becomes five, and someone inevitably says, ‘Listen will we get a pint in?’ And people are up from the country, they’re not going home that night, you have a late vote, so you have a pint.”
“There was a lot of alcohol to it,” he said.
Murphy served as Minister for Housing between 2017 and 2020. During his time in office, the number of homeless people in the state rose from 7,941 when he entered the role, to a peak of 10,541 in October 2019.
The numbers fell to 8,699 in June 2020, when he announced he was stepping back from ministerial duties as a new government was being formed.
Murphy said that the visit to Leo Varadkar’s office to say he would be stepping back from ministerial duties was an emotional one.
“I knew that I wanted to leave politics entirely, and when it looked like a government was going to be formed, I knew I had to go and tell him. So I built up the courage to do that, and when I was sitting in the Taoiseach’s office, and the enormity of it really hit me and I just couldn’t get the words out, and got a bit emotional.
“But then I was worried that he would think that I was coming begging him for a job, so I had to compose myself and say ‘Look, I have to go’,” he said.
He said that the homeless figure reaching 10,000 was his impetus for deciding to leave, but that the local elections that year made him decide to postpone his decision.
“When the homeless numbers officially hit 10,000, I decided it was time to resign, and I put together a plan, and all I had to do was go to Leo, and I was going to resign from office. But something in my personal life intruded, and I had to put those plans on hold.
“By the time I could go back to that plan it was too late because the local elections were coming, and I didn’t want to resign in a way that would damage all those candidates. So I held on,” he said.
As of last month there were a record 14,760 people – including over 4,500 children – living in emergency accommodation, following nine consecutive months of rising homelessness figures.
After stepping back from his role as minister, Murphy served as a backbencher until April 2021, when he resigned as a TD. He returned to working in international affairs, a career that he had pursued before politics, taking up a position with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation as an election monitor.
Murphy has observed elections Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and most recently in Georgia for the country’s presidential elections.
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