‘I do it for Dad’ — Tipperary councillor Fiona Bonfield on family, housing and her love of Newport
On the banks of the Mulkear River in north Tipperary is Newport’s relatively new town park. Officially opened in 2024, it was one of the catalysts that made Labour Party councillor Fiona Bonfield get into local politics, and a place she still calls one of her favourites in the county.
It was there that I met with Cllr Bonfield to talk about her hometown, her tenure as Cathaoirleach of Tipperary County Council, and her life outside of politics.
“The town park is how I got involved in politics from day one,” she explained. “As a town here we had a growing population and we had no facilities for our youth.
“A petition started at the time, back around 2013, and I would have been involved with a local woman at the time who did petition politicians for resources in our town, and it went from there,” she explained.
“We waited a number of years for the park, but you can see when you look around that what we got in return was a beautiful town park and playground. At the time we were petitioning for a playground, but through the council we got the park as well and it’s a fabulous facility.”
Cllr Bonfield said that the park is a quiet, peaceful place where she enjoys going for walks and being able to hear the birds and the river.
“I really love coming down here, as you can see there’s a lovely walkway, you can hear the birds, you can hear the river, so on a Saturday or Sunday morning I come and walk around here and it’s my way of chilling out,” she explained.
The park was officially opened in 2024 and cost €2million to develop. © Katie O’Donovan
The park’s walkway is one of Cllr Bonfield’s favourite spots among the park, which provides a safe place for people to run and walk.
When she’s not on council duties, the Newport woman says that she likes to keep herself busy and on the go.
“I love being on the go, I’m heavily involved with the Tidy Towns, I love helping out in the community,” she said. “I’m involved in the musical society here as well.
“Years ago, I was heavily involved with the GAA, I started off as a board delegate, and then I became the juvenile club secretary, and then I became the senior club secretary, so I did my stint in the GAA and I absolutely loved it.
“I didn’t play camogie myself, athletics and soccer were my sports when I was young, but I do love the GAA and hurling, I think it’s the best game in the world. I love going to the matches as well, but unfortunately I don’t get to go to them all now because of the job I’m in, but I go to as many as I can,” she said.
While juggling the responsibilities of a busy job as chairperson of the county council, as well as all the regular work that is involved in being a local councillor, Cllr Bonfield said that chilled out weekends at home help her to relax.
“People laugh at me when I tell them this, but I love my weekends at home in my own space, because in this job I’m dealing with people every day of the week, I’m listening to their problems, listening to their concerns, and I actually love the weekends that I can spend at home.
“I love music as well, and I go to the odd concert. I was actually at Westlife last weekend with my niece, it was her Christmas present so we got to see them and they were absolutely fantastic,” she said.
Despite having ways to switch off, Cllr Bonfield said that it can be hard at times to leave politics at the door when she gets home.
“There’s nights where I’d be twisting and turning in bed because you have lots of stuff going on in your head, and there’s really genuine cases there at the moment, I mean housing, as we all know, is huge.
“We have three families with children [from Newport] in homeless accommodation in Nenagh, and it’s hard to believe that we are still there with that,” she said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the stock to give them, we can only do so much as a local authority, but we need the stock, we need to start building more houses and we need to start moving on this because it’s causing havoc to society, to family members. To me, I think everybody deserves a roof over their head.
“It’s hard to see families in homeless accommodation in Nenagh,” she said.
Keeping active also helps Cllr Bonfield clear her head, with the councillor often starting her days with an early-morning gym session.
“It is hard to switch off, I’d have that going on in my head, but I do have the weekends to myself and I love the gym as well, so I get up early in the mornings. We have a fabulous gym here in Newport, called the Workshop, it’s a great facility.
“It’s widely used by the teenagers in the town, and there’s a lot of women who do the small group training and I do that two mornings a week,” she said.
Cllr Bonfield was first elected to Tipperary County Council in 2014 for the Labour Party, an allegiance she got from her mother.
“My dad would have been a member of Fianna Fáil for years, I remember him canvassing for Michael Smith TD, but my mum was a Labour supporter, and she tells me that she always admired John Ryan, because when she became the age to vote, everybody assumed back then, in the 60s, that you would vote what your parents told you.
“She always remembers her first vote, John Ryan was in the town of Newport and he was walking down the street, and he crossed the road, and shook her hand and he asked her for her vote and she always voted for Labour after that.
“So it was from my mam that I got involved in Labour, and I would have campaigned for Alan Kelly the time he ran for Europe. But I never had any intentions myself to be a politician. I love communities, I love the local stuff, my grá is local politics and that’s where it lies,” she explained.
Cllr Bonfield said that she enjoys helping people out, regardless of what political party they support.
Despite joining her mother’s party and not her dad’s, Cllr Bonfield said that he was a great support to her, and still inspires her life both inside and outside politics.
“He was a great support to me, we lost Dad in 2020, during Covid, and I miss him, but I get up every day and I do this for him. He was big into politics, he loved it, he’d watch it morning, noon and night on the TV and listen to it on the radio.
“But I do it for him, and he’s always there, always there in the background no matter what I do,” she added.