‘I don’t miss the stress, I miss the people’ – Tipperary’s Michael Fitzgerald on life after politics
A former Tipperary councillor who retired in 2024 after more than 45 years in public service has said his proudest achievement was serving his local community for more than four decades.
Michael Fitzgerald was first elected for Fine Gael in 1979 at just 23 years of age, going on to lead a long career in public service, before deciding not to contest the 2024 general election.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Mr Fitzgerald said that while he doesn’t miss the stress of being a councillor, he does miss the people he got to know along the way.
"People ask me all the time do I miss it, and I say to them that I don’t miss it. I miss the people I met along the way, but I don’t miss the amount of work, the amount of stress and the amount of dealing with issues, that at times, were becoming more and more difficult to deal with,” he said.
Local politics went through a lot of changes during the time that Mr Fitzgerald served, with housing and the environment becoming more and more of an issue as the years went on.
"When I got into it first, it was totally different, there was very little work to be done,” he explained.
"The main thing was rural housing in rural areas, a bit of planning permission, the county development plan kind of dictated the way the county operated and it was as the years went on that local government became more difficult, and more emphasis came on local government.
"It was enjoyable, but it was hard going as well,” he added.
By the time he retired, housing was a major problem, Mr Fitzgerald said, as well as changes to planning policy which dictates where people can build homes.
"The whole housing problem, which is a problem at national level is more of a problem at local level because it’s at local level that the houses will be delivered, and it’s the local representatives that will be the first on the scene to deal with it.
"The whole idea of rural planning changed totally with restrictions and with people not being able to build their own houses on their own land, and I was always one who said that we had to have sustainable development, we had to have development in our countryside, and that there was an onus on us as councillors to leave the county in the same way that we found it,” he added.
"There was an onus on us as councillors to do the best and pass on the work to the next generation of councillors, and I think we did that,” he said.
When asked about his proudest achievements throughout his 45-year career, Mr Fitzgerald said that bringing homes to rural areas that hadn’t been focused on for housing always brings him joy when he thinks about it, as well as topping the polls on numerous occasions.
"I headed the poll on six occasions, I chaired South Tipperary County Council on three occasions, I was the first chairman of Tipperary County Council when the north and south councils were amalgamated in 2014, and I was honoured to be the first chairman of the new county council,” he said.
"At local level, I saw little villages around me, little villages where nothing had happened, I saw that there was no infrastructure, no houses being built, no piped water supply in some cases, and I pioneered a lot of that in my area.
"I got houses built in villages, there are people now living in these villages that wouldn’t have had houses built. Going back 35 years, when I made suggestions that we look at little places that were hamlets in the past, and that were let die and run down, I made the council buy land, I made the council try and take over properties and rebuild them, and rebuild up villages, which wasn’t easy, but we did it,” he said.
Moves like these were helped by a “common sense approach,” Mr Fitzgerald added, saying that while money coming from central Government in the past was scarce, they made the most of it across Tipperary.
When he was first elected in 1979, Mr Fitzgerald said that he was scared and overwhelmed, but that sage advice from his father, Michael Fitzgerald senior, who also served as a county councillor, helped him settle into the role.
"I remember when I went in first, I was terrified,” he said.
"Because of the fact that TDs and senators were allowed to be members of local government at that time, you have the likes of Sean Tracy, Noel Davern, you had ministers and you had senators and you had all these people that were very well able to talk and to express themselves.
"You just felt a little bit overwhelmed by the fact that you were sitting there and that you were expected to make a contribution,” he explained.
“I asked my father – and I was only on the council two years when he passed away – but the day I got elected, he said to me ‘all you can do is your best, and if you can do that and come away, you’ll come away happy’’,” Mr Fitzgerald recalled.
Taking this advice in his mind, Mr Fitzgerald said he always tried to do the best he could for the people he served.
"I think I did that, it wasn’t easy at the start, but we got there,” he said.
By the time the 2024 local elections rolled around, Michael said that he had had enough, and decided not to contest the elections.
“I suppose I had enough. I had one big regret after the 45 years, I had served on every committee that was possible within local government, and I tried on a number of occasions to become a member of the Oireachtas, of national government, either a TD or a senator, but it just didn’t work out for me.
"I would really have loved to have been a member of the Oireachtas, to have served even for one term, and I thought in the election I stood in in 2022, I got over 3,000 votes and I felt at that time, to be able to pick up 3,000 votes in such a small area, there was a general election and I thought it was my time,” he said.
"I didn’t make the Fine Gael selection convention, Garret Ahearn was picked at the time, and he didn’t make it, but I felt that that was my last opportunity. My mother used to say ‘what’s for you won’t pass you,’ and she was right, it wasn’t for me and it did pass me,” he said.
News in 90 seconds - Tuesday, February 10
Since retiring from the county council, Michael says that he is still involved in the community in his local area, and still tries to help people out whenever possible.
"I do a lot of local fundraising, whether it’s for the GAA, a local festival here, I’m on the board of the Moorehaven Centre in Tipperary town, and of the Circle of Friends cancer support centre, they asked me to come along on a voluntary basis just to help out, and I get great pleasure out of doing things like that,” he said.
"I’m still pretty active, I also became a grandad a year and a half ago, so I’ve been enjoying that as well,” he explained.
At the end of his 45 years of council service, Michael says that he hopes people remember him for being a good person who treated everyone fairly.
"I hope people remember me for generally being nice to the people, I treated everyone fairly and even though I was a member of one political party, I never worried about that, I didn’t mind, I worked hard for every political party, every person that came to me, I treated them with respect and dignity.
"And if they remembered me for that, that’s all I would ask, and I think they do because there’s still so many people coming to me to pick my brains on things, so I still help people who come to me.
"But I hope people will say that this guy gave it his best shot, he did his best, and I helped a lot of people out, and it showed in my votes that people appreciate it, and I’ll always thank people for that,” he added.