‘The Secret Life of Leinster House: What you really need to know about how the country runs’ is one of the most hotly-anticipated books on Irish politics in recent years.
Given the calibre of the author, this is no surprise. In his decade and a half covering national politics, Gavan Reilly has become one of Ireland’s best political journalists.
He knows his subject extremely well and is generally impartial. There is no sense that Reilly desires fame or wishes to become the story.
At election time, Reilly’s value as a compiler and distributor of information is extraordinary. He also has a genius for making Irish politics relatable, which he demonstrated in 2024 with his brilliant exposition of the PR-STV system using Smarties.
Reilly has set out to help more people understand what Irish politics is like, and readers who do not follow the goings-on within the Oireachtas will find many things outlined here eye-opening. Many of the political interviewees – some of whom give their reflections off-the-record – provide memorable one-liners and insightful observations.
“The key to retaining a seat in Leinster House, some rural TDs insist, is to be in Leinster House as little as possible,” Reilly writes. Like much else in the book, this is depressing, because it is surely true.
Many Irish politicians are local fixers who happen to serve in a national parliament. The Dublin media’s disproportionate focus on the Healy-Rae dynasty obscures the extent to which this problem exists across political life, not to mention the problem’s root cause.
This is explained here very perceptively by the People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy, who laments the fact that his constituency work overlaps so closely with the work of his partner, an elected member of the South Dublin County Council.
He cites a good example of the illogical nature of a clientelist system. A serious backlog in passport applications post-Covid led to TDs asking more parliamentary questions about the issue, which in turn led to additional staff being provided to the Passport Office whose job it was to deal with queries from TDs.
As Murphy suggests, much of what TDs spend their time doing should really be done directly by other State entities.
Yet a TD who adopted a principled position of not engaging in this work – just like a TD who spent five days of each week in the parliament dealing with legislative issues closely – would probably not survive the following election.
Reilly’s description of how modern canvassing works is particularly significant, as the changes to this practice did not receive sufficient attention in the aftermath of the dull general election of 2024.
The last four general elections have taken place in the relatively dark months of February or November.
This is quite a contrast from the era of Bertie Ahern, who favoured summer elections to maximise Fianna Fáil’s advantage in being able to call on huge numbers of canvassers who could work long into the bright evenings.
Prior to that, he describes how the analysis of vote tallies in the Haughey-v-Fitzgerald elections of 1981-1982 became so sophisticated “that it was sometimes possible to identify the swing voters almost by name.”
That Ireland was a more parochial and rural country, where people knew their neighbours better and where societal institutions such as political parties could depend on the active participation of far more people.
Even allowing for the existence of a strong stabilitarian vote – which saved FFG in 2024 – conditions in today’s more atomised society are bound to make it harder for parties to connect with the public or to understand the discontent which is bubbling under the surface.
As public enthusiasm for knocking on doors has decreased, money has become more important in Irish elections. A TD who represents an urban constituency suggests that it now costs about €15,000 to mount a competitive campaign, and Reilly adds that an Independent candidate in an urban area is likely to need twice that amount.
This bestows a major advantage on the existing status quo, given that the country’s political parties now receive more than €20 million in annual funding, with the big parties like Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin getting the lion’s share.
Young people interested in politics tend to assume that political life involves a strong focus on ideas and debate.
Reilly’s account of how Irish politics works is therefore particularly striking, as the lack of any intensive discussions about the direction of the country is repeatedly mentioned.
Dáil “debates are in reality more akin to a series of statements read in a vacuum, in which one TD stands up, reads from a script and sits down,” he writes.
Parliamentary party meetings are “stage-managed and mundane.” Reilly reminds the reader that the Irish parliamentary whip system is by international standards abnormally intolerant of dissenters, and votes do not take place in cabinet either.
Since the Lisbon Treaty came into being, national parliaments have had the ability to register their concerns about specific EU proposals, but this has not happened here.
In this environment, it is hard to condemn any individual politician who neglects to show much interest in legislative developments.
Voters do not seem to care much either at times. The two Fianna Fáil TDs most complicit in abusing the parliamentary voting system in 2019 are still both in the Dáil, and are now actually ministers.
In a full chapter describing the Dáil Bar, Reilly describes what the overall lack of seriousness can degenerate into by telling a story about the long night in 2013 when abortion was first legalised in Ireland, and when the bar remained open throughout these nocturnal parliamentary proceedings:
“Members in the chamber recalled how the debate itself was becoming harder and harder to hear over the din of chatter from slightly inebriated members who thought they were whispering to each other. In a 5am vote one TD, visibly worse for wear, voted against their party’s position on a particularly emotive amendment. Ordinarily, breaking the party whip could result in a suspension from membership of that party. In that instance, the party whip simply declared the vote to be an error and a blind eye was turned.”
Despair can be a natural reaction for an observer of Irish politics, and resentment another. This book is not the work of a cynical reporter though, and Reilly is correct to point out that a TD’s salary is not especially high, amounting to a monthly take-home pay packet of around €4,400.
The strangest insight within the book is contained at the outset: “Sometimes, as the author was surprised to learn in the course of interviews for this book, even ministers themselves are yearning for a way out, drained by the job yet terrified of admitting – after climbing so high up the ladder – that they no longer want to be there.”
Just as many Irish voters have checked out – less than 60% of voters bothered to turn out in November – many Irish politicians and ministers are eyeing the door, hoping that the right opportunity will come along.
Reilly raises interesting questions throughout but there is no sense he has any particular agenda. Aside from the other gifts which have allowed him to succeed in his industry, he has the humility to know that making public policy is not a journalist’s job.
What the reader does with the information is a separate matter. Looking at ‘The Secret of Life of Leinster House’ in its totality, there are many steps which could be taken which would improve Irish politics. Some involve changing rules by law, whereas others would be better dealt with by voters changing their behaviour.
In terms of the organisational culture, Leinster House is a place of work, and there should be no bar on-site. There is already a dress code for those working there, and it should be enforced as strictly for politicians as for the ushers.
There is a case to be made for significantly increasing the salary of TDs, but only if such a move was linked to parliamentary reforms and the establishment of a much longer cooling-off periods preventing ex-politicians (and ex-Special Advisors) from engaging in any kind of public affairs work. If Leo Varadkar wants to influence government policy in future, he should stand for election again, rather than leveraging his public service background for private gain.
Term limits should be considered, with the expectation being that after spending time as a highly-paid legislator, a retiring politician will return to whatever job they did previously, without walk-in or parking privileges in the national parliament.
Structurally, something has to be done about the lack of real local government in Ireland, if only to ensure that TDs can focus more on national issues, whether that be Committee work or scrutinising legislation coming from Brussels.
Politicians should be paid well to think, to study and to discuss the topics of the day in a spirit of openness.
Even this sympathetic account of political life in Ireland makes it clear that this is not happening right now.
