Coffee with Killian

Exclusive By Frank Neary, for IrishElection.com

Flurries of March snow were whipping at the ears of Sinn Féin Councillor Killian Forde as he crossed Dublin’s Parnell Street to step through the sliding glass doorway into the warm and stylish foyer of the Jurys Inn where I was waiting to meet him for our 11.15 a.m. appointment. A short elevator ride took us to a second floor lounge where we settled into the upholstery for coffee and a chat.

IrishElection.com had asked me to go keyboard to keyboard with Cllr Forde, Sinn Féin’s representative for the Donaghmede area on Dublin City Council since 2004, for a web debate. Forde and I agreed that we’d first like to meet, maybe eye one another up like boxers at a weigh-in, before engaging in debate. To get a sense of each other, and avoid descending into platitudes.

As we settled into our cosy corner of Jurys Inn, people on the street below went about their daily lives — students and workers, mothers and children, ducking and diving. Beyond the picture windows lay historic Parnell Square, the Rotunda Maternity Hospital, the eighteenth century townhouses, the Gate Theatre, the Municipal Art Gallery, and the Garden Of Remembrance. The full circle of life.
Killian Forde, aged 35, who comes from a north Dublin seafaring family, topped the poll and exceeded the quota for the Donaghmede electoral area in the local elections of June 2004. Killian’s father Frank rose to the rank of Ship’s Master with the state-owned B&I passenger and freight shipping line, and Killian himself worked summer’s at sea before commencing a peace studies degree in Derry.

Forde is currrently completing an M. Phil Thesis at Trinity College, Dublin, and as well as the twenty hours a week he puts in as a councillor, he also holds down a day job with a Traveller’s Rights organization. Killian is not in favour of councillors being full-time public representatives, and feels the demands of the role of part-time councillor, especially in a large organization such as Dublin City Council, could make it a difficult position to continue with indefinitely.

Though he won’t be standing for a Dáil seat in the general election due in 2007, Forde is Sinn Féin’s first substitute candidate for the European Parliament seat which Mary Lou McDonald won for the party in the 2004 European Elections. Mary Lou has been selected as Sinn Féin’s candidate to contest the forthcoming general election in the Taoiseach’s constituency of Dublin Central, and Forde would be expected to assume the Strasbourg seat were MEP McDonald to win election to Dáil Éireann.

Killian Forde’s 18.5% of first preference votes gave Sinn Féin its first seat in the Donaghmede electoral area of Dublin City Council in 2004, at the expense of sitting Fianna Fáil councillor Brian Byrne, who lost his place on the council. Forde’s 3,509 votes were, he says, the reward for over two years of canvassing and community activism. The party stresses the importance of politicising residents in communities where it wants to develop its support, a lesson Sinn Féin had learned in Northern Ireland.

Killian Forde’s Donaghmede is a mature working class area on the north-eastern fringe of the Dublin conurbation. Existing schools are having trouble maintaining rolls as the age profile of the resident’s grows older, while paradoxically a massive new greenfield development of 10,000 homes nearby on the opposite side of the M50 ring road is currently under construction without any integrated educational facility. The existing residents of Donaghmede hope the new development will open up a better range of commercial, leisure and community facilities for their use, and it is already delivering some real benefits in the form of affordable housing for allocation to aspiring local homebuyers.

Make sure to return to IrishElection.com during the coming week to read exclusive coverage of IrishElection.com discussing a range of contemporary political issues with Sinn Féin’s Killian Forde.