Holly Cairns: ‘They say rural Ireland is so conservative. It’s not true and it’s kind of insulting’

At the start of an interview for this piece, the new Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns (33) makes her way to the Leinster House plinth to pose for some accompanying photos.

The Cork South West TD has just been on RTÉ Radio 1, where a quote was read out to her which came from a spokesman for the Labour Party. The spokesman, in response to Cairns categorically ruling out a merger with Labour, said: “Among the many differences between us and the Social Democrats is that the Labour Party was founded by James Connolly. The Social Democrats were founded by Stephen Donnelly.”

Quick on her feet in RTÉ studios on Thursday, Cairns shot back that she would “rather be in a party that has abandoned Stephen Donnelly than a party that abandoned the principles of James Connolly”. Donnelly, now Fianna Fáil Minister for Health, left the Social Democrats in 2016, just over a year after the party was established.

Naturally, the first person Cairns bumps into on the plinth after her interview is Stephen Donnelly himself.

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Donnelly does not stop and instead strolls on by, apparently engrossed in a phone conversation. Cairns gives an awkward grimace but it’s clear she’s quite enjoying herself. Even though she only became party leader on Wednesday, she is already well on the way to perfecting the art of the acerbic one-liner.

Take this quote, after she said people were questioning whether she was experienced enough for the job: “Let’s not forget that some of the most experienced politicians in the Dáil bankrupted the country a little over a decade ago.”

Or this, when asked the obvious question about how many seats she could see the party winning in the next general election: “If I knew that, I would be straight down to the bookies.”

In her first press conference as the newly installed leader on Wednesday, Cairns shot from the hip and spoke less like a politician and more like an activist.

Campaigning work

It was campaigning work that sparked her interest in politics. Cairns answered a call from the Together for Yes group, which was looking for local organisers in the 2018 campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment. It took just one door knock to convince her that politics was the job for her after she quickly changed a woman’s mind about voting.

“That woman went from saying, ‘I don’t think I am going to vote’, to a firm ‘yes’. She said: ‘I am voting yes.’ At the end of the day, and on a lot of doors, what it came down to was: we are either voting for safe legal abortion, or unsafe illegal abortion.

“So, I got really into it. I got really into trying to get the votes. I was like, this is how you change things, so, is it?

One of the reasons I decided to really go for this and give it everything is because I think there are huge cohorts of people who feel exactly like I did four years ago

—  Holly Cairns

“I always heard this thing about how this area is so conservative, or rural Ireland is so conservative. For one, it’s not true. And secondly, it is kind of insulting. It is this presumption that because we are from a rural area that we do not understand facts.”

Cairns was politically homeless at the time, and in fact she had never voted in any election bar the 2011 presidential election. She believes there are many people out there just like her: younger voters politicised by the big social referendums of marriage equality and the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment. There are other groups she may have her eyes on: those who have become disillusioned by traditional party politics, perhaps following the crash, and younger voters who were never captivated by any party in the first place.

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“One of the reasons I decided to really go for this and give it everything is because I think there are huge cohorts of people who feel exactly like I did four years ago. And the kind of language that I heard from politics did not speak to me.”

Cairns’s path to becoming the youngest political leader in the Dáil was not a clear or straightforward one, and it seems she experienced a few wilderness years.

She grew up on a small dairy farm on the Turk Head peninsula in Lisheen, West Cork. When she was four, her parents split up and so she spent half her week with her father Clem, who worked in publishing, and the other half with her mother Madeline. That experience, she says, was “good practice for this” – this being politics in Leinster House. “I’m used to packing a bag every week,” she laughs, “I know how to do this.”

‘Being a dropout’

In school, it “never occurred to me that I would go into politics”. She was envious of her friends who knew what they wanted to do. But Cairns didn’t thrive in an academic environment, although she says she did well at English. She went to college to study international development in Liverpool but was unhappy and eventually quit.

“That was a difficult decision to make, because there is a bit of a stigma attached to being a dropout. Then, I didn’t know what to do again.” She moved to Waterford where she enrolled in a broad health studies course, before teaching briefly in Dundalk.

After a neighbour set up the Aurelia Trust, aimed at improving the lives of abandoned children and young adults in Romania, Cairns travelled there and worked in an orphanage.

On her first day on the job, she says, a council member moved around the room of successful male candidates congratulating them on getting elected. When he got to Cairns, he said: ‘Well done, you look great’

“I really enjoyed that work. I think that started my interest in disability. And that’s how I ended up working in Malta, working in an organisation called Inspire. I loved that job. It made me realise how much good services can transform somebody’s life.” Eventually, she decided to return to Ireland to work for the family business, which transitioned from dairy to beef to vegetable-seed production. From there, she went to University College Cork to complete a Masters in organic horticulture.

It’s a winding path that led Cairns towards the referendum that politicised her into joining the Social Democrats, and onwards towards becoming a county councillor. A fact that has been much commented on is how she won her seat on Cork County Council by a single vote in the 2019 local elections.

On her first day on the job, she says, a council member moved around the room of successful male candidates congratulating them on getting elected. When he got to Cairns, he said: “Well done, you look great.”

Cairns has been outspoken about the treatment women politicians are subjected to, and has spoken about her own terror after an online stalker showed up at her home.

National media profile

Since her election as a TD in 2020, Cairns has carved out the kind of national media profile that some of contemporaries can only regard enviously. One of her big challenges will be to make use of that profile to whip her party into shape in the polls: in its last outing in the most recent Irish Times/Ipsos poll, the Social Democrats commanded just 2 per cent of the vote.

But she maintains that, come election day, more people will “opt for the kind of change that we want”.

Change is also the Sinn Féin mantra, however, so what is it that the Social Democrats will offer that Sinn Féin doesn’t?

“One of the things, I think, is that we can’t delay any more in terms of climate action. I don’t know if Sinn Féin don’t want to say that they would take climate action because they are on a rise and want to keep votes and all of those things, but there is a danger when as a political party you try to become everything to everybody you can become nothing to anybody.”

She quickly adds: “I’m not saying that they have done that, but I don’t know where they stand really on climate. But we are not in any way unclear about the action we would take on climate.”

We have a good bit of work to do in terms of differentiating ourselves. I would never take my seat for granted

—  Holly Cairns

The real threat to the growth of the Social Democrats is the prospect of a Sinn Féin surge.

In the 2020 general election, Sinn Féin did not foresee the incoming swell of support from the public and failed to run enough candidates, losing out on seats around the country.

Cairns herself bagged 3,023 Sinn Féin transfers, pushing her ahead of Fine Gael Senator Tim Lombard to take the seat. The next time around, Sinn Féin will transfer to its own and run multiple candidates in each constituency. Cairns knows that big challenges lie ahead.

‘Strong mandate’

“It makes me determined to communicate what the Social Democrats are about. We have a good bit of work to do in terms of differentiating ourselves. I would never take my seat for granted.”

Asked if she could picture entering coalition with Sinn Féin after the next election, she says: “It’s really hard to say. I want to build as much of a mandate as we can, to have an impact on the programme for government and the policies that are implemented. I would like to see a left government in Ireland. I’m sick of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but I want us to have a strong mandate if we are going in.”

It is already a notable aspect of her leadership that she speaks of the Social Democrats as being a party which is very much eyeing up a stint in government, if adequate votes materialise.

Another remarkable aspect of her ascent to party leader is that it appears to have been a drama-free affair, after Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall stepped down saying “now is the time to hand over the leadership reins to the next generation”.

Cairns says: “I think Catherine and Róisín wanted it to happen before the next election. They wanted it to happen in enough time for someone to bed in and have an opportunity to make an impact.”

Party TDs were told last Tuesday that the co-leaders would step down the next day. Deputies were brought in individually and told face to face.

“They said you need to think about whether you want to put yourself forward or not. Gary [Gannon] knew immediately, he was out.”

“I didn’t know for sure what I wanted to do. But you know that feeling when you don’t know what to do and you flip a coin and it lands on this side and you say, oh, that doesn’t feel right...”

When she made her decision, Dublin Bay North TD Cian O’Callaghan and Wicklow TD Jennifer Whitmore were the first to row in behind her.

“And then it all happened super quickly.”

In her first Leaders’ Questions foray, Cairns raised the issue of housing and presented herself as part of the generation who have been locked out of home ownership. It was a tactical move, a message directed at the public, the Government and perhaps also Sinn Féin, as the party which has made the housing crisis its main line of attack.