DEPARTING THE DÁIL:HE DESCRIBES himself as the TD furthest from the Dáil and nearest the White House, but after 24 of the last 29 years as a Fine Gael TD PJ Sheehan has decided to call it a day.
His base at Goleen, near Schull on the Mizen Head peninsula in southwest Cork, is almost 400km (250 miles) from the Dáil.
A campaigner for the fishing community over many years, he is proud of the number of piers built. “I got 19 piers reconstructed and extended in the first 20 years. Even though different governments were in power I was still able to pull it off,” he says. “Other TDs had nothing to do with it.”
The day Charlie Haughey stood down as taoiseach, the Fine Gael TD asked him as his “last act in office” to extend the powers of the Castletownbere harbour master “over the waters of the Berehaven sound”.
Haughey responded: “The battle is over, Deputy. Let us return our swords to their scabbards.”
He held his seat from 1981 until 2002 but regained it at the 2007 general election. At 77, and the second oldest TD in the House, he decided it was time to retire. “I was born on St Patrick’s Day in 1933, the year of the economic war. My father always said the best two-year-old bullock on his mountain farm wouldn’t pay the christening money for me. That’s how bad the cattle prices were the year I was born.”
At one time he was an auctioneer and farmer. His son Dermot, a county councillor, now runs the family grocery firm but was unsuccessful at the candidate selection convention, where seven competed for two places.
Looking back over his career, the Fine Gael TD says, “There was very little allowances for anything. There were three deputies to every working room in Dáil Éireann and now the majority have their own rooms. The Senators are upgraded as well. You have your secretary and parliamentary assistant in Dublin and your secretary in the constituency and you had none of that in the 1980s and 1990s.
“Life has changed a lot, but . . . let nobody cod themselves that they can walk into Dáil Éireann and . . . take it easy.”
Recently embroiled in controversy, he apologised for his treatment of gardaí who stopped him driving out of Leinster House grounds under the influence of alcohol. “That’s all water under the bridge . . . blown out of all proportion by journalists,” he says.
And his advice to aspiring TDs? “It’s not going to be a bed of roses. That’s number one and number two. And always remember to keep your feet on the ground; don’t ever let power go to your head.”