AS THE youngest of a clatter of barefoot children born into the notorious slum known as The Black Hole of Inchicore, plucky Gay Mitchell rose above his lowly beginnings to become internationally revered as the Mother Teresa of Dublin 8 – the little Saint of the Gurriers.
It’s a heartwarming story and one that loses none of its lustre in the retelling, at least where Gay is concerned.
Oh, but they all have election buses now.
But only Gay Mitchell can claim to have built buses, which he did when working as a raggy- trousered apprentice in the festering heat of the CIÉ busworks.
His Taoiseach is so proud of him. We could see this yesterday as Enda powered up to full election mode for the launch of Gay’s campaign, full of the walloping bonhomie which saw him punch his way to power last February.
Potential president Gay smiled bravely as his party leader thumped him on the arm and slapped him in the back as a gesture of his total support.
There had been mutterings that the Taoiseach and party strategists were less than pleased when scrapper Mitchell won at the selection convention, beating the patrician Pat Cox and popular Mairéad McGuinness.
Indeed, in photographs taken immediately after the announcement of the result, Enda looked like he’d just bitten into a lemon.
Then Gay dropped off the radar and the Taoiseach got on with the day job. It turned out that MEP Mitchell had a holiday booked and paid for, and he took it.
He’s back now and Fine Gael is cranking up the electoral machine to give him a major push. The launch got off to a rather nervy start though when Enda failed to materialise at the appointed time.
They cooled their heels outside Trinity College’s Science Laboratory for what seemed like an age, before the party leader finally rolled up, over half an hour late, for the formalities.
“I was in Ballina opening a primary care facility. The traffic was only terrible on the way down,” the Taoiseach explained afterwards.
So Gay and his wife Norma and a woman in a black suit who was pushed into nearly all the photographs waited and made small talk, and the glossy young Fine Gaelers posed in their tight yellow T-shirts and held big election placards over their heads.
The young people – known as Ibec Youth in some quarters – struggled to keep the Mitchell placards aloft in the teeth of a vicious wind.
“There’s a great buzz around, isn’t there?” commented junior minister John Perry as an air of panic began to set in. It looked like the Science Gallery would be starting its next exhibition earlier than expected. It’s called “Surface Tension”.
To relieved sighs, Enda made his entrance and was mobbed by opportunistic backbenchers. He punched the air and nearly had Frankie Feighan’s lights out in the process. Gay and Norma and the woman in the black suit rushed to Enda’s side. The photographers wanted Enda and his candidate to cosy up for the cameras.
“Stop throwing me around,” quipped Norma to the Taoiseach, who was wearing more foundation than Mrs Mitchell.
As he moved closer to his candidate, Enda didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. A manly hug? Another wallop? (You could see the fear in Gay’s eyes.) In the end, the Taoiseach half-heartedly grabbed him near the armpit in an awkward attempt at an embrace.
The Young People sped to the rescue and crowded around them holding the placards aloft, but there was unmerciful gust of wind and it was only by the grace of God that Gay’s eye wasn’t taken out by a flying slogan.
Gay Mitchell: Understands Our Past. Believes in Our Future. Blinded by the Present.
Everyone galloped upstairs before any real damage was done, with handler-in-chief Frank Flannery pushing the Young People (marvellous teeth) ahead so the cameras could pick them up.
Charlie Flanagan, chairman of the parliamentary party, chaired the proceedings and solved the puzzle when he called on the woman in black to introduce their candidate to the assembled Blueshirts. It was councillor Eithne Loftus, who is running for the party in the forthcoming Dublin West byelection.
As she made her way to the lectern, Enda shouted some baffling encouragement. “The Full Monty, Eithne!” She was spared the manly thump.
And so to Gay. Enda leaned sideways and gave him a friendly punch before he began his speech.
“As one of nine children . . .” A familiar opening spiel from the Little Saint of the Gurriers, who went on to wax lyrical about his hard-working Dublin Ma – Martin McGuinness won’t get it all his own way with his sainted mother who worked in the shirt factory.
A party handler noted the hint of cynicism rising from the press corps.
“We may scoff, but it’s true,” he shrugged as we contemplated peeling an onion to supply the missing emotion.
Charlie was quick to dismiss talk of the party not being fully behind their man.
“There have been suggestions that there have been some people in Fine Gael who have not been engaged in the Gay Mitchell campaign. Let me immediately nail that myth. Over the last few weeks, every member of Fine Gael has been working around the clock for Gay Mitchell.”
And they all laughed, some harder than others.
The candidate quoted Vaclav Havel. (I’ll see your Vaclav and raise you a Nelson Mandela. It’s going to be a long campaign.) He made a fine speech, bringing in the good old days of the party and a return to Declan Costello’s vision of a “Just Society”. We have to reflect how we got here. And cherish the diaspora. And the childer.
Addressing the issue of suicide will be one of the cornerstones of “the Mitchell presidency” as Enda is already calling it.
Later, during an interview on Newstalk, Gay said that if anyone else told him to smile a little more he would throw himself off O’Connell Bridge.
He finished, to cheers and applause. Enda was delighted with him.
He’s going to get stuck into the campaign because he believes Gay has the right credentials to be president.
Of the “Magnificent Seven” running, Gay Mitchell is “the most magnificent of them all”. He thinks his man can win. “I expect, and look forward – if God spares me – on Easter Sunday 2016, to have President Mitchell arrive outside the General Post Office and take the salute when the Proclamation is read . . .” said Enda, as his audience swooned and he invoked Ireland’s latest rugby victory.
The journalists wanted to know the Taoiseach’s view on senior party figures who have attacked Martin McGuinness’s past record.
He said he was remaining above it all, but didn’t sound inclined to stop his lieutenants wading into the trenches.
Then everyone went back out and admired Gay’s bus.
And, as we know too well now, it’s far from liveried buses he was reared . . .
