Hot Press Interview with Aodhán Ó Riordáin

Labour’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the recently appointed Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, could never be accused of being careerist.

As the former primary school principal tells it, his entire career path just sort of... happened.
“I didn’t expect to become a primary school teacher, necessarily, didn’t expect to be in Sheriff Street, didn’t expect to become principal, didn’t expect to get elected in 2004, didn’t expect to get re-elected in 2009, certainly didn’t expect to get elected to the Dáil, didn’t expect to become a Minister of State. I didn’t plan any of that. It just happened. So, if I lose my seat in the next General Election, well then so be it.”
Ó Ríordáin stands at well over six feet tall, but he's not intimidating. Rather, the 38-year-old Dubliner comes across as earnest, thoughtful and decent.
We’re sitting at a meeting table in his workmanlike office in Government Buildings. His assistant attempts to sit in on the interview, and seems a little put out by Hot Press’ objections. Eventually a compromise is reached and his iPhone is left on the table to record proceedings...

OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s your earliest memory?
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin: It would probably be a family visit to the Isle of Man as a two-year-old. Most of my memories would be centred around my family. It was one of the only times we went abroad for holidays.
Where did you come in the family?
Fourth of the lads. I got used to the idea of being the youngest. My parents would be daily mass-goers; my Mam used to bring me in the buggy and call me ‘the baby’ and that used to irritate me a lot. The oldest brother was seven years older than me, then two more brothers. That was the plan, to have four boys, and then Mary came along, possibly unexpectedly, seven years after me. So I had the upbringing of thinking I was the youngest and then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t anymore.
Or the cutest.
Or the cutest, yeah, yeah, yeah... (laughs).
What did your folks do?
Dad was a secondary school teacher – maths and physics – in St. Aidan’s in Whitehall and my Mam stayed at home. She reared us. She would have come to Dublin from Cavan and gotten a job in the Civil Service. She would have had to leave that job when she got married. My Dad retired about 10 years ago.
What kind of an upbringing was it?
It was great. We lived in Malahide. The housing estate I grew up in had only recently been built. My parents were in Zambia for a number of years. My second oldest brother was born there and they moved back to Ireland in the early ‘70s. You can only compare your childhood to others around you, but it was very happy and secure. It was quite a traditional 'family values' upbringing, not in an overbearing, negative way. Obviously, religious services would have been important, mass would have been important, sacraments would have been important. It was something we did as a family. I spent a long time as an altar boy - we all did.
Are you still a regular mass-goer?
No. I stopped as soon as I left home. I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision. It was most likely out of laziness, that I didn’t have to anymore. If I was at home or staying over on weekends, you’d probably go along with the family. I think it’s still important to my family – and I certainly have no intention of insulting or denigrating how I was brought up.
Do you believe in God?
Em... (long pause). I think I believe in a force for goodness, but that doesn’t necessarily have a... I believe in a lot of logical thinking. Do I feel there’s a God? Do I speak or communicate or have to justify myself to a God? No. Do I believe there is a force for goodness around us? Yeah, I do. It’s something I reflect upon and not something I would necessarily speak in public about or expect anybody to agree with me about.
Was your family Irish-speaking?
No. There was actually very little Irish at home. My mother was educated in Northern Ireland because she’s from the border. Her father was a customs officer. A sense of Irishness would have been important to us growing up. All my family have identifiably Irish names: Sean, Colm, Donal. I was christened ‘Aidan’. My sister is Mary.
Why did you change your name to Aodhán?
When I went to UCD, it was something that everyone seemed to be doing. And so I became ‘Aodhán Ó Ríordáin’. A lecturer in UCD told me the proper pronunciation [A-on]. I never thought it would be a big deal; your name is something that your friends know, that people around you know. It’s funny, though, the people who call me ‘Aidan’ are people who knew me from school or my family. Everyone else calls me ‘Aodhán’.
Were you a good school student?
Probably an underachiever. Not very studious. My brothers and my sister are very bright people, but I think they probably underachieved. I didn’t really have enough determination. I did okay in my Junior and Leaving Cert, but I don’t think I really reached my potential at all.
What kind of music were you into growing up?
I used to share a room with my older brother and he went through a whole phase of Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osborne and Black Sabbath and so I had to go through that with him. Then he went through the whole Bob Dylan thing for a long time, which was torturous. I used to not be open about my musical taste because he was kind of a purist. So if I said I liked a Genesis song, he’d scoff loudly and think that I wasn’t really with it! Obviously, U2 were a band that I liked, and Counting Crows as I got older. Donal would have been into R.E.M. before anyone even knew who they were, and then he discarded them completely as soon as they became known.
He was a hipster, basically.
I don’t know if I’d call him that, but he certainly seemed to be ahead of the curve. I was into football, he was into music. Music was really, really important to him.
What age were you when you had your first drink?
Sixteen. I come from a family that doesn’t drink. My parents don’t drink, they are from a pioneer background. So pubs would have been alien to us. We wouldn’t have drinks at celebration times, at Christmas. It wasn’t something that was in the house. A lot of my friends would have been similar.
So you must remember your first drink well!
Most people in secondary school were drinking from about 12 or 13 – it was something they did at weekends. I was taller so I was able to get into places. I think it was the midterm break, maybe Easter-time so I would have been about 16, almost 17, and the plan was that I was going to try a non-alcoholic drink. Another chap had been drinking for a while so he wanted a pint of whatever. I went up and ordered a pint of Kaliber, a non-alcoholic beer. And he said ‘No, we have none of that. We have Tennent’s L.A.’, which I think was one per cent. So I said, ‘Yeah, fine, whatever’. So I go over to the lads and one of them, Carl, said, ‘That’s one per cent now, there’s alcohol in that’, and, actually, embarrassingly enough, we sat back and debated whether we would drink it or not, because once we had, we would be drinkers! I think I liked being a non-drinker, on one level. I liked having that purity in my life. But anyway, we shared that pint of Tennents L.A. between the three of us, and we were drinking from then on.
Presumably you moved on from Tennents L.A.?
We moved on to cider. I don’t think my family would have understood, necessarily, the drinking culture, so I was possibly able to get away with it more. Maybe they did know? The biggest fear I'd have had as a teenager was to be discovered drinking. Then I became 18, went to college and, to be honest, alcohol played a huge role during my college years. Probably too much.
So you drank too much in college?
I dunno. Maybe I was the same as any other student. We were all perfectly normal, but a lot of the money I was spending was certainly spent on alcohol. It was fun. You were meeting new people. It was a way of enjoying yourself. I think, at that age, you have a greater capacity to drink than you do when you’re older. You can get up the next day and struggle on reasonably well.
Do you still drink now?
Yeah. It would mostly be wine at home. I wouldn’t be a pub person.
What about drugs? Did you ever smoke a spliff?
Actually, when I heard about this interview coming up, this was the one answer I knew to have ready! (laughs) Well, I was never a smoker. So, when I think back to my childhood, I was a pretty well-reared child who didn’t really have an interest in smokes or drugs. The people around me weren’t really into it that much either.
How about something like ecstasy?
There was a huge E culture in UCD. There was a big controversy around the student union at the time around the promotion of ‘safe’ taking of E and the debate around having half a tablet. So there were people who were into that. I wasn’t around them. I didn’t smoke, so it wasn’t something that I did. I do remember once, on a trip to Amsterdam, typically, I had a joint with a few friends but it didn’t work for me. If you don’t smoke, then there’s no gateway to get involved in drugs.
What age were you when you lost your virginity?
Ha! Do I have to answer that question? I certainly wouldn’t have been... (pauses) I want to be very careful here. It’s a very personal question, but I don’t want to be too coy about it. In my teenage years, definitely not, in my college years, I was definitely not sexually active on any serious level. That’s something that came into my life much later.
You spoke recently on The John Murray Show about being bullied in your teenage years. Did that have a big impact upon you?
Well, I only spoke about that because it came to my mind. I’d say that people who went to school with me would probably say, ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about’, but it’s just a feeling that you had. I was always the youngest in my class. I was always the tallest. And therefore, you’re an easy target for comments and I didn’t necessarily respond to them well. In secondary school, again, there would have been an element of taunting. I think if you’re an easy target, then you cave in on yourself and you don’t have confidence in yourself and you’re extremely self-conscious.
And is that what happened?
I remember being incredibly self-conscious, particularly at the beginning of secondary school. And then you act out a bit, and maybe you get involved in public speaking because you’ve got no self-confidence and feel the need to prove yourself. It really had an impact. There would be an awful lot of name-calling, especially [when] I used to deliver newspapers and, I suppose, when you’re much taller than everybody else and supposedly weaker, then you can be easily targeted because they know they’re going to get away with it. It tapered off in fifth and sixth year in school and then when you go to college, it’s amazing: I remember one day, walking through UCD and I checked myself, and I actually realised – I maybe had a new girlfriend or a self-confidence boost – I was walking differently through the campus. I was actually standing up straight. I had never stood up straight before. I’m kind of used to slouching. I was always ashamed of my height, it was something that people would tease me about.
Why talk about it now?
I go around to a lot of schools and there’s a bunch of kids you talk to in whatever year, and there’s children who have confidence and are very at ease with themselves. But if you look at the side or the back of the class, there’s always someone that bit quieter, that bit reserved and not involved – but they’re watching all the while. I was that kid.
Ask.fm, which has been a vehicle for bullying in the past, are relocating to Ireland.
I think, to be honest, based in Latvia or based in Dublin, they’re going to have the same impact. That’s the nature of that industry. It’s how it’s regulated and run that makes the difference, not where they’re located. That sort of thing, though – school, you could go home for the weekend and you could dread Monday but you didn’t have to dread...
Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Yeah, and your phone – now people having access to you. I was trying to explain to some kids recently that if you didn’t see a certain film in the cinema, you might never see it again, ever. And they were like, ‘Well, what kind of a world did you live in?’. They just thought that I had come from the Stone Age. I’m only 38! It’s not that long ago where you didn’t have that connectivity. And it doesn’t matter how strong you are; it does affect you.
There’s a lot of public bullying of politicians...
People can easily have a go at you on Facebook or Twitter or email you or text you dog’s abuse and you’d want to have no brain and no heart and no feeling and no nervous system not to be affected by some of the stuff that is said at you. If you’re a child and you’re very conscious of your body image and somebody says something to you which reinforces the worst fear you have about yourself and keeps saying it, it’s devastating. It’s funny, because you don’t want validation from your parents; you don’t want validation from your teacher; you’re just looking for approval from the person who’s slagging you off. That’s the weird thing. You actually want them to like you. You actually want them to think that you’re okay.
What did you study in college?
Irish and History. I did primary school teaching after that. And became a headmaster about eight years after that.
Was that always the ambition?
No. When you’re in a family that’s headed up by a teacher, I suppose you would have an interest. I remember meeting my career guidance teacher and talking about the things I might like to do and she said, ‘You’re picking a lot of very secure careers, there’, and maybe, through my own insecurity, I wanted a very secure, very ‘safe’ job. Primary school teacher felt more secure than jobs in the private sector. You’re not as dependant on the whims of market forces, your pay scale is your pay scale, you move up and in a certain direction and the job has a certain amount of saneness about it. But I did an Arts degree. I kinda delayed the question of ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’ when I was in UCD and took a year off and played with the idea of going into Irish language television. I did some work with TG4 on a show called Hollywood Anocht, where I was a film reviewer, and then I realised that it wasn’t for me. I remember thinking that I wanted to do something to help other people, rather than just be very self-obsessed.
So teaching won out over TV?
I liked the idea of teaching and when I got my degree, I intended to go through a Gael Scoil or whatever and do that. I just happened to come across this opportunity in Sheriff Street in March 2000 and I remember saying to myself, ‘I think I’ll stay here in the summer and then I’ll go off to a different school’. I just fell in love with the kids there... and life takes you where it takes you.
Were your family politically involved?
No. Politically aware. For example, Northern Ireland would have been an important thing in my family. My grandfather on my mother’s side would have been involved in the War of Independence and the Civil War. My grand-uncle on my dad’s side would have been involved in the 1916 Rising. My granny was very nationalistic and had a lot of comments to make on what was happening in the North. So it was a political household but not party-political. I have uncles involved in Fianna Fáil, my granny would definitely be a Fianna Fáil supporter. My parents weren’t, but they weren’t Fine Gael either.
Why Labour, rather than Sinn Féin?
Sinn Féin held no attraction to me. It just didn’t. When you begin teaching in a place like where I was teaching, you analyse bigger questions than flag waving and nationalism and the issues around a 32-County Ireland. Nationalistic questions are kind of easy ones because they don’t really challenge people. The issues about the way your society is structured, they’re quite difficult ones. I always had an interest in social justice. I remember asking myself, ‘Why are the kids I’m teaching not having the same opportunities as I had?’ I used to be frog-marched down to the library on a Saturday, but the kids I was teaching didn’t have that option. Their library was closed on a Saturday. Everyone in my class wanted to go to secondary school and everyone in my secondary school wanted to go to college. The kids I was teaching didn’t have the the confidence or the expectation that they were going to do that because society was telling them that they were dirt. And I had to admit I came from an area where we would look down upon and consider that people from a certain address were just, you know, lesser than we were. They were rough, they were not to be trusted, they engaged in criminality. Now, my family were different. We used to watch things like Today Tonight and we used to watch things like Strumpet City and my dad is from town originally, having grown up in Belvedere Place in the ‘40s. He had a strong sense of social justice and he would have moved beyond nationalism to a wider view of why things like education, housing and social justice are important. I came to the conclusion that the place for these things to happen was in a political party – and a political party that actually wants to be in government. There’s a great attraction to being on the outside, a great attraction to being always campaigning and agitating – but there were very practical things that I wanted to accomplish.
Such as?
I wanted to get the library open on a Saturday. I wanted to think differently about the way the housing situation was structured. I wanted to think differently about schools. I couldn’t help them as a teacher, as much as I wanted to.
How did you get involved in Labour?
It was around the time of the local electns in 2004, the end of the dual mandate had come in, so TDs weren’t going to run for the local elections anymore. Joe Costello was in Dublin Central and wouldn’t be able to run. Tony Gregory, same thing. So there was a freeing up of people who wanted to run. My brother was working for Ruairi Quinn – and then for Pat Rabbitte. We had a conversation, I thought about it – and I joined the party in November 2002. To be honest, I didn’t join to be a member of the Labour Party, I joined to run for local election. And I was selected in May 2003. It changed things. Before that, I did a lot of work in football. It’s funny, the first time I ever felt like I had achieved anything in all of my life was when I decided to set up a football team in this school of mine. It was an inner city girls’ school and it was totally, in many ways, very strange for a girls’ inner city school in Dublin to have a gaelic football team. But I set it up – and I got a lot of support from the community. They began to win everything and I had a massive sense of satisfaction that I had finally done something that was actually working.
It did change the dynamics. It changed how I interacted with the parents and the people in the community. I was there in March 2000, and by May 2003 I was a candidate. That’s only three years and three years is not an awful long time, but they voted for me.
Having worked in the inner city and seen the impact of drugs, would you be in favour of the successful Portuguese model of decriminalisation of all drugs?
I can’t give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to that because it’s too wide. Do I think we should think differently about our drug policy? Yeah. I don’t think dealing with it through the criminal justice system, primarily, is the way to do it. I think, for example, if you were an addict or have a drug problem, then I don’t think you need to be dealt with through the criminal justice system. Also, if we did this by ourselves, if we took a standalone stance on drug policy and liberalised some of our legislation around it, would we regret it? Would we become a target for drug tourism? I certainly think we have to think differently than before. The honest answer is that I have a huge amount of sympathy around the argument of not dealing with a certain level of drug users through the criminal justice system and liberalising our approach to drugs. I think the Guards probably have their own views on that, too. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make it worse.
Where do you stand on the abortion issue?
I remember when I ran for election first, it was one of those questions you just didn’t want to be asked. Abortion is the question in Ireland which shows up politicians in an incredibly negative light because there’s a massive amount of cowardice that surrounds this issue. People aren’t willing to talk about it because the extremists are the ones who are dominating the debate. I used to have a very pro-life view of this issue. That’s changed.
What changed your mind?
Once you meet somebody who has been to England and had an abortion, you find yourself not in any way able to judge them. I think the 8th Amendment has to go. What model would I go for? I don’t know. I think a lot people here are comfortable with the idea of a woman making up her own mind over her own body and over her own future and I am very comfortable that that needs to happen, but there are always going to be questions about until what time, and I can’t say that I know when that is. Is it 24 weeks? Is it slightly earlier? I don’t know the minutiae of that, but I do know that I can’t stand over a situation where women are forced to do something that they just don’t want to do.
You’re married to political journalist Áine Kerr. How did you meet?
Well, there’s the article she wrote about me (points to framed article on office wall). I met her in 2004. I was running for local election and she was writing for The Northside People and I was sending all these press releases about housing conditions and her editor apparently said, ‘You’re a bleeding heart liberal, Áine, there’s a bleeding heart liberal running for election, you’ll get on like a house on fire’. So she rang me and arranged to meet me at 3pm outside Connolly Station on Friday the 13th of February, 2004...
That’s very specific!
I remember it because the next day was Valentine’s Day and I remember it was Friday the 13th – and when I saw her crossing the road, I knew it was her. I don’t know how I knew, but I recognised her. I know it’s a bit goofy, but I remember thinking to myself, ‘Something very significant has just happened here’, as I saw her crossing the road. So we spent about an hour and a half together, walking around. She was stunned that I didn’t have a car, because Áine is from a part of the country where people learn to drive from a very early age and I only learned about three years ago. So we had to walk everywhere. At the end of it – she was very professional, but I kept her number and got in touch and supposedly asked about getting a photograph taken for the story and eventually we decided to go for a drink and it went from there. We got married on the 2nd of January, 2010. Almost five years ago.
Should we have a directly-elected Lord Mayor in Dublin?
I think we should. I think Dublin needs a political figurehead and somebody should be that for five years and to actually have power. I think most European cities have somebody that they vote in, to represent the city and to make strong decisions about the city. I think people would feel differently about local government if they had somebody overseeing it who they had directly elected themselves.
120,000 people marched last weekend to protest against Irish Water. Why?
There are people who always march and who are always against some of the things that the government does. I remember the bin charges protest from about 10 years ago. People said that they would go to jail and that they would die before they would pay bin charges. It was all very excitable and this whole thing about double taxation was said, and nobody was going to pay their bin charges – and 10 years later everybody is paying them, including those that said they would go to jail. This is different, in that it's the middle ground of people who are genuinely irritated by what has happened. There’s a huge level of distrust between the political system and the people who vote them in. And because the level of trust between the political system and the people has been severely tested, that leap of faith is not within people at the moment. And they look at water rates and then they look at Irish Water and they say, ‘What am I actually paying for?’ Hopefully, what we’re doing now is something that in 40 years time, people will look back on and say, ‘That was the right thing to do’. People accuse the political system of not looking long-term. It’s not a popular measure, but sometimes doing the non-popular thing is actually the right thing to do.
It hasn’t been handled well...
To say it’s been poorly handled is an understatement. To say that we need to improve our communication skills is an understatement. But I also think there’s a huge level, sometimes, of arrogance within the political system in that they don’t think people understand and I think we haven’t taken the time to have that conversation, and to say to people, ‘Here’s the reasons why we think the charges should be brought in’ and to listen to the alternative view. But I think, hopefully, when the bills do arrive next year, people will open them and look at them and say, ‘Actually, that’s much more manageable than I was led to believe’. Some of the messages that people are getting about whether the company will be privatised or the meters causing radiation in the water system or that the money is going towards banker’s bonuses – this is the rhetoric that has been used. If that was true, I’d be marching as well.
What are your thoughts on the rise of racism in Ireland, given the attacks on the Roma community in Waterford?
I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think there is a rise in racism.
In the UK, you’ve got the rise of UKIP.
UKIP are clever. We don’t have an organised right wing, anti-immigrant party in Ireland as of yet. Maybe one of the parties will take on that mantle. Individual politicians have said silly things. We’ve always had a difficulty in Ireland with difference. Why would a white, middle class, settled background male care about inequality? Because I saw it in the kids that I taught, that inequality really hurts and it lasts with you for a lifetime. You can’t say that a group in society, whoever they are, because of their ethnic background or certain traits, are all X, Y and Z. It just doesn’t stand up. You inevitably marginalise and disenfranchise people, and disadvantage them. It’s easy to pick on the Roma community. They don’t have access to mainstream media, they don’t have well-oiled, well-groomed spokespeople who will give the alternative point of view. They are particularly vulnerable.
What about the allegations of criminality?
Are there elements in the Roma community that are doing things they shouldn’t be doing? Yep. Are there elements in every community that are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing? Yep. Are there people living in my constituency, identifiable people who everybody knows, engaging in criminal behaviour? Yep. Why don’t we march on their doors? Because we know we wouldn’t get away with it. Because we know they have a criminal infrastructure or they can return the serve. Roma people, in general, can’t, won’t, or are very unlikely to return the serve. Is there a problem with criminality in Waterford? I believe there is, but the way you organise and deal with that is to talk to the Guards. You don’t organise a lynch mob.
Are you worried about Labour’s prospects in the next general election?
I used to really enjoy my job in teaching because I would get up every morning and look myself in the mirror and say, ‘You’re not that bad a person, because you’re doing a good and honourable job and you’re good at it and they really need you’. You have to be able to say the same thing in politics. If I spent my entire time worrying about the next general election, then I’m not going to be good at my job. If I was worried about the next general election, I wouldn’t say anything about Roma and Waterford. I probably wouldn’t say anything about any marginalised group because they don’t have political power. But then you’re not being true to yourself and true to the reason you got involved in politics. I take life as it comes. If this job is for me, then it will work out in the next general election. If it doesn’t, well then I’ll go off and do something else.
So what are your plans for the next year?
I’m determined to do the absolute best that I can for the values that I have and the values of the party that I became a member of. Are we gonna do well? I have to be positive. I have to analyse the country that I grew up in, the state of the country when I came into government, and the place we are now in. I can’t hand that over to other people. I have major problems with Fine Gael and the way they look at life and the way they look at society. That’s why I am a member of the Labour Party. I can’t let my country slip back to where we were before, rolling from disaster to disaster with no underpinning of any real values. Part of my job is to go to EU meetings – and the Finnish people will say that the fundamental underpinning of their education system is equality. And they really believe it. And they’ve got everybody to believe it, too. The entire populace are sucked into this idea that equality works. Whereas in Ireland we have this obsession with individuality and short-termism. We don’t look long term and the political system inevitably reflects that. I want to be part of a party that strives for something different.
Have Labour let people down?
Yeah. Equally, have we ensured that we have maintained the threshold of decency in the economy? Absolutely. The sad thing is that those people who will feel the benefit from that are not people who will be commentators. These are people in low-end jobs, in minimum wage jobs, in public sector jobs protected through the Haddington Road Agreement, the minimum wage, the social welfare structure... maintaining all those things has meant that everybody in the economy has benefitted because the base line has been protected. We’re now in a position where we can build on the base line. Labour has to do well because I believe the country needs us.