Spat at and on call 24/7 for part-time wages: Tipperary councillor shares realities of modern politics
Local councillors are struggling to secure mortgages and support their families on what is technically a part-time wage for what many describe as a full-time role, according to the Tipperary native who is head of the councillors representative body.
Fine Gael councillor Mary Hanna Hourigan, from Cappawhite, just outside Tipperary town, is the president of the Association of Irish Local Government (AILG), which represents more than 950 local councillors across the country.
Cllr Hourigan said that most councillors are working full-time away from the council to supplement their income, and that many councillors are finding it hard to balance the demands of being a local representative with their jobs.
"Some people work because they have to work, they have no choice, but they really struggle then to get to meetings and to get to everything,” Cllr Hourigan told the Irish Independent.
“I was self-employed when I was first elected and I had to give it up, I could not do the two, and I suppose because the council was new to me, I wanted to try and prove myself, but it is very difficult and it’s very difficult to attract new people in,” she explained.
Currently, councillors are paid a base salary of between €28,000 and €31,000, in line with the public sector pay agreement, which is subject to tax. Councillors can also claim travel expenses and grants for sitting on various committees and groups.
"Currently my salary is €31,742 gross, and I am getting a salary with the AILG so I pay a lot of tax. But if you work it out, that’s about €610 gross per week, which, if I did 60 hours a week, it’s only €10 an hour, while the minimum wage is €14.15 an hour.”
Despite pay increases in recent years, Cllr Hourigan said the role has become more demanding, often requiring more than 60 hours of work per week.
"We can work as much as we want, or not, but it’s definitely become much more difficult, I definitely do 60-plus hours a week, and that would be on a good week,” she said.
"People need stuff all the time and it’s so varied, you’re dealing with older people, people that are vulnerable – I’m dealing with a lady at the moment who became homeless because her relationship broke down, and eventually, after a long time, she got her local authority house, but I had to hold her hand in terms of filling in forms because everything has become more centralised, so it’s making our job more difficult.”
When Cllr Hourigan was first elected in 2009, she said a lot more services were offered within the county, making it easier to raise people’s cases with a local person, such as a community welfare officer.
"When I started out, we would have had a community welfare officer based in Tipperary town, and she was brilliant, and she would meet us on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but then they took all of those out of the towns, and in Tipperary, it all went to Clonmel.
"Now, they only want to deal with you by email, there’s no physical person. But now it’s been even more centralised, they’re now down in Little Island in Cork. So for me to help out with filling in forms for things like the exceptional needs payment, it’s just more problematic,” Cllr Hourigan said.
“We would have done higher education grants in Clonmel, we were dealing with medical cards locally, school transport, everything was done more locally, we had our own refuse collection service in the county council, we had water services, so everything becoming more centralised is making everything more difficult,” she added.
The role of a councillor also isn’t seen as a permanent job, meaning public representatives can struggle to access mortgages and loans due to the instability of the job.
"The big challenge for people, and why people will not get into politics is because we are not seen as having a permanent job, so the banks will not touch you for a mortgage.
"We have a lot of councillors now who are renting and they’re telling me ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be a homeowner,’ they just feel that’s how it is,” Cllr Hourigan said.
"Apart from the financial element of it, it’s the uncertainty, we have no permanency, so I have to go out and knock on doors six months before the local elections, and that’s getting more and more difficult."
While the Cappawhite-native says she loves the job of being a councillor, she doesn’t like canvassing, due to the reactions candidates often get on doorsteps.
"You could do five things for somebody, but they’ll always remember the thing you didn’t do, the thing you weren’t able to get across the line, so they will not vote for you,” she said.
"The last election was particularly difficult with Dundrum House and all of that, that was a tough one, I got spat at, I got pushed and I had to run away a few times, and my family got abused as well,” she said.
Within the council, councillors deal with housing, roads, climate, the environment and transport, among others, but Cllr Hourigan says she also feels like a social worker at times.
"I would have people who are in arrears with their mortgage and I’d go and sit down and talk to them, I may have somebody who may have a child on a waiting list for speech and language therapy or physiotherapy so you meet those people and sit down with them, and you need to listen and understand and be on their side.
Councillors also sit on Strategic Policy Committees, or SPCs, which can relate to housing, planning, roads or climate, all of which are time-consuming and involve continuous training and development, Cllr Hourigan explained.
"You have to train yourself all the time, and we definitely need more support to provide us with more access to relevant training and development.
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"I’m on the housing and the planning SPC and everything changes in relation to planning, everything in relation to housing, so it’s trying to keep up with the changes, and you need to spend a lot of time reading stuff,” she added.
Despite the challenges that come with the job, Cllr Hourigan said she loves being a councillor and enjoys the variety involved, but added that she is one of the lucky ones who can afford not to have a second job.
"Liam Browne says he wouldn’t be able to have his kids at college or pay his mortgage if he wasn’t working, Sean Ryan then is teaching in Rockwell College and Sean has to take time off to get to meetings, and then David Dunne, he was going to work a 12-hour night shift after the last full county council meeting,” Cllr Hourigan said.
Work-life balance can be a struggle for councillors too, Cllr Hourigan said, explaining that people ring her or call to her house every day of the week.
"I worked all last Saturday and Sunday, and on Sunday, I was looking after my mother, but I had people calling to the house as well.
"I remember another day I was out for a walk and I met this man with his dog and he said ‘sure ye have a great life, this is the third day this week I saw you out walking’, but it was only half an hour,” she said.
"The hard part is that you have to be so accessible and people say ‘I know it’s Sunday and I shouldn’t really be calling to you’ but yet they’re in your house, or ‘I know Mary you’re in doing your shopping, but I just saw you’,” she added.
"But I’m not whinging, I love the job, and like every job, there’s good days and bad days,” Cllr Hourigan concluded.