COMMENT: 'Michael Lowry loved my Shih Tzu, but only when I started getting off in Thurles'

An opinion piece in the Irish Times recently was headlined: “Dear Tipperary North voter, I’m furious with you for foisting Michael Lowry on us all”.

I had to admire the headline, many readers will know I am prone to a provocative, even lurid, headline.

But in this case, I found the wording to be insulting to the 12,538 people who exercised their democratic right to give the Holycross man their first preference vote in the 2024 General Election.

A politician should be subjected to scrutiny and criticism if they fall below the standard expected of them, but the voter is the voter.

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And when someone is democratically elected in Tipperary North, well, go back to your own constituency with your fury!

In a General Election analysis piece the morning after the first count from Tipperary North on December 1 of last year, I wrote: “Tenth straight re-election for Michael Lowry and the seventh time the Independent has topped the poll since 1997.

“He confounds political analysts, but there is no great mystery to Lowry, it is just hard work, strategy, a great team around him and of course, a wide, wide base of loyal supporters.”

I am not defending Michael Lowry, but you cannot dismiss over 12,000 first preference votes and his record in General Elections and Local Elections because, like the Moriarty Tribunal, you find him to be “profoundly corrupt”.

An allegation which Lowry has always steadfastly denied.

People outside of Tipperary seem perplexed about Lowry’s successful re-election to the Dáil every General Election since 1987.

But in Tipperary, it’s no great mystery.

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Lowry delivers for people and communities, at least that’s the perception from North West Kilkenny to mid-Tipperary. And it’s not entirely unfounded.

His modus operandi seems for the most part to do the work quietly and behind the scenes.

In my view, he is connected to the real power in this country; the civil servants.

The men and women behind the elected men and women. Ministers, TDs, Taoisigh come and go; moving between portfolios like musical chairs.

So, who guides the new starters? The civil servants.

Lowry’s own son, Micheál, hasn’t licked it up off the ground either.

He isn’t the most quotable in Municipal District meetings, motions are seldom put down and the Thurles MD is one of the shortest meetings across the county.

But that doesn’t mean Micheál isn’t grafting, just like Lowry, he is just not shouting too loud about it, because the voters on the ground know who got it done. It’s a simple strategy, but effective.

Who needs a newspaper? There’s a direct line to voters in the work they do.

Why send in a press release, when you can phone the voter directly and tell them who got the pavement done?

Many readers will presume I know Michael Lowry well, have met him many times, spoken to him many times. In truth, I don’t and perhaps that’s the way it should be.

There was a time he was on every second page of this paper, but that’s not the case anymore and it’s a better paper for it.

It didn’t hurt Lowry either.

The political veteran also lost key areas in the boundary re-draw in mid-Tipperary and the county being split into a three-seater Tipperary North (taking in pieces of North West Kilkenny) and a three-seater Tipperary South for the 2024 General Election.

He still pulled in 12,538 first preference votes, down from 14,802 first preference votes in 2020 when it was a five-seater one-county constituency.

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I spoke with Lowry, only for the second time ever, prior to the General Election on WhatsApp when Seán Ryan hadn’t heard back from anyone on Lowry’s team about going on the hustings with the then Independent candidate.

So, I reached out wondering why the local journalist couldn’t get an answer to his request to join the campaign for an evening for a colour piece in our General Election supplement.

Despite mixed messages from Lowry’s campaign team, the seasoned politician sprung to action and facilitated Seán to join the campaign trail for a few hours in Thurles.

Before that, the only other time I spoke to Michael Lowry was in between train carriages on the way to Thurles one evening from Heuston Station in around 2013.

The train was packed, and so we stood opposite each other the whole way down the track.

We didn’t speak nor even look at each other.

He read the paper.

I minded my Shih Tzu, who was in her pink bag with the front part of it open so she could see out and it kept her entertained and quiet watching the legs of people walking by.

The bag was an accessory that, for a young, male student, usually attracted a lot of attention.

Lowry read his broadsheet the whole way down and he didn’t pay me a slight bit of notice, until we began to roll into Thurles.

I started to gather my things, and he realised quickly that I was getting off in Thurles and he hadn’t been a very good politician on the way down; I must be local and he hadn’t engaged with me. I couldn’t have cared less.

Michael couldn’t nor shouldn’t have known me. The closest connection we had was my father did a bit of work at his house one time just outside Holycross, I think he fixed a wall or something.

But as soon as Lowry saw me motioning to get off in Thurles, he chimes up: “I love your dog!”

I smile and look up and say: “Thanks, Michael.”

Now I would have thought he was really panicking and this next part is speculation but I imagine, most people would have thought: “Oh sh*te, he knows me, I haven’t a Jaysus clue who he is…”

That’s probably most people’s thought process, but Lowry’s brain works faster than that and without taking a breath, he replied with: “I didn’t recognise you with the beard.”

If I was mean, I would have said: “What’s my name so?”

But I just admired the speed with which he got himself out of a Boherlahan-sized local electorate hole. I smiled back and we both disembarked and went our separate ways.

And what’s the point of that anecdote?

Well, let’s be honest, against a man as sharp as that, the real “opposition” in Dáil Éireann never stood a chance.

This is parliamentary democracy and he who gets the votes, wins. And Lowry knows how to get the votes.

The man who never loses, won in the end, and quite literally, gave two fingers to the opposition.