MICHEAL Martin has warned The Monk to put “all his cards on the table” when it comes to his criminal history.
And when quizzed about the crime boss running for the General Election, the Tanaiste said: “People are entitled to run, but I think it would be a very retrograde step.”
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In a wide-ranging interview with The Irish Sun, the Fianna Fail leader told us where the Government went wrong on immigration, revealed his plan to set up a CIA-style intelligence agency in Ireland, and outlined the one red line that will stop him taking his party back into Government with anyone — including Fine Gael.
The Irish Sun joined the Tanaiste on the campaign trail in Dublin South Central with Fianna Fail candidate Catherine Ardagh.
Our first stop was at St James’s Primary School in the Liberties.
On a tour of classrooms children ask the Tanaiste if he lives in the White House, has he met Donald Trump and one maths whizz quizzes: “What’s 77 times six?”
The staff told the Tanaiste that a number of children in the school are living in emergency accommodation and others in international protection accommodation centres.
The number of people living in homeless accommodation has risen to almost 14,500 under this Government including 4,419 children.
Afterwards, Martin admitted to us that the Government needs to do more on homelessness and he claims Fianna Fail has the best plan to get it done.
He claims the answer is building more social homes — with 8,000 new builds this year, rising to 12,000 when acquisitions and leading is taken into account.
But it’s not enough.
The Tanaiste said: “We need to do that constantly over the next ten years to deal with the homelessness situation and we will get it done.”
He claims that the Land Development Agency, backed by €4bn from the Apple tax, is the best vehicle to drive this forward and fired shots at opposition parties’ plans to instead set up a housing construction agency which he claims “will take years” and delay housing.
House prices and rents have also continued to rise under the coalition — something the Tanaiste says his own children raise with him “all the time”, as his eldest son is looking for a house.
He points to schemes like Help to Buy and the First Home scheme which can help buyers bridge the gap to afford a home but ultimately the answer to bring down house prices will be supply.
The Tanaiste believes prices will start to moderate when Ireland is producing between 45,000 to 50,000 homes per year – a point he claims we can hit by 2027 or 2028.
Later on the canvas for votes outside Sundrive Shopping Centre in Kimmage, three kids stop the Tanaiste and local candidate Catherine Ardagh and ask them to clean up their local park.
“Can you fix the teenagers littering” one kid asks while another chimes in “we found a vape”.
The Tanaiste said he is banning vapes and warned the kids that if they want to be good at football they have to stay away from e-cigs.
Earlier, at St James’s School, a youngster told the Tanaiste he wants to be a garda when he grows up, while another child talked about ‘bad people’ at the bottom of the stairs in their flat complex.
MORE GARDAI NEEDED
The Tanaiste said that the coalition did not do enough to put more Gardai on the streets, which is why he now wants Fianna Fail to take up the justice portfolio if they are lucky enough to get back into Government.
He said: “I think Covid impacted on this government’s capacity to do it but I do think we could have done more in terms of gardai on the streets.
“And in terms of more town based investments and urban investments in the cities because we picked this up over the last year and a half in particular – people are saying to us they don’t feel safe in our cities and our towns, that is the perception.
“A lot of people don’t feel safe on public transport and workers don’t feel safe on public transport.
“So there is a need for a broad suite of policies. It’s not just extra gardai.”
OTHER AGENDAS
In the neighbouring constituency of Dublin Central, one of Ireland’s most famous gangland figures Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch has claimed that he is going to run for election.
The Tanaiste tells the Irish Sun that initially he was sceptical of reports of the Monk’s election bid because “maybe there were other agendas at foot in relation to it”.
Asked for his thoughts on the Monk running for election, the Fianna Fail leader said: “People are entitled to run but I think it would be a very retrograde step.
“I think we need full transparency from Mr Hutch in terms of putting all his cards on the table.
“It is alleged about his life and his involvement – those are the allegations we’re all reading about in newspapers and so forth and he has been before the courts.
“I think we need absolutely transparency on all of that and the public would need to know who exactly they are voting for.”
In Fianna Fail’s manifesto launched this week, the party promises to set up a new “intelligence agency” similar to the CIA in the US that will focus on anti-terrorism, national security and cyber security.
The Tanaiste said this will include expertise from Gardai and the Defence Forces, but will be a stand-alone new agency — as he claims intelligence has been a “grey area” in Ireland for too long.
He said: “I know we need to develop a national security strategy and do it promptly — and have proper political accountability.”
“I think we need full transparency from Mr Hutch in terms of putting all his cards on the table. It is alleged about his life and his involvement – those are the allegations we’re all reading about in newspapers and so forth and he has been before the courts.”
Micheal Martin
This new intelligence agency would be housed in a new Department of Domestic Affairs, which would also deal with immigration — an area the Tanaiste admits the Government made mistakes in.
He said the initial White Paper from the coalition in 2020 was “wide of the mark” because it was produced during Covid at a time when 3,500 people were coming into the country.
This has now risen to 15,000 people per annum and the Tanaiste says that the White Paper is “not fit for purpose”.
MIGRATION ISSUE
He said: “I think there was a naivety in the policies that emerged coming out of the White Paper.
“We are developing a new policy framework in terms of a new department and that would, I think, deal with the migration issue more coherently and comprehensively.
“We envisage putting border security within that department, with stronger checks at airports to make sure people are coming in legally and properly. I think the dividing up of the responsibilities between Justice and Children has not worked.
“Perhaps we took away the expertise that had been dealing with the issue prior to the division of the responsibilities between Children and Justice.”
GOVERNMENT VOW
While discussing problems that children with disabilities are facing in getting therapies and equipment, the Tanaiste vowed he will not take Fianna Fail back into Government unless coalition partners agree to bring therapies back to special schools instead of the HSE’s facilities.
He said: “I think the therapies is a huge problem.
“I think the Progressing Disability Services programme which started in 2010 has not worked. I believe in restoring therapies to special schools, that is my commitment.
“This is a red line issue for Fianna Fail. I am not going back into Government unless it is agreed that those special schools and education bodies help with the recruitment of those therapists and they go back into the special schools and then build it up from there.”
He added: “We will do the processes that are contained in the DEIS (Delivery Equality of Opportunity in Schools) plan.
“Like the school we were in earlier on in St James’s — I will allocate therapists for there.”
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Inside Micheal Martin's political & personal life
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MICHEAL Martin is the current leader of the Fianna Fail political party in Ireland.
Martin has worked in Irish politics in 1985 and served as the country’s Taoiseach from June 2020 to 2022.
In the most recent Government, he served as the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
And in the past he has worked as a TD, Lord Mayor of Cork, a city council member and a teacher.
The 64-year-old Cork man joined Ogra Fianna Fail when he was studying at University College Cork.
He completed a Masters in Political History before doing a H. Dip and working as a history teacher in a fee-paying secondary school in Cork called Presentation Brothers College.
After just one year of teaching, Martin quit to become a full-time politician after being elected to Cork Corporation as a Fianna Fail candidate in 1985.
After decades of political work, Martin was elected the new leader of the country in an historic vote in June 2020 that formed the 33rd Dail.
In his first speech as leader of the country, Micheal Martin praised his wife Mary and his children who were unable to see him elected Taoiseach due to Covid restrictions.
Martin married his college sweetheart Mary O’Shea in 1990. The pair had a New Year’s Eve engagement and were married the following summer.
They have had five children together; Micheal Aodh, Aoibhe, Cillian, Léana and Ruairí.
The pair welcomed their first son, Micheal Aodh four years after they married and daughter Aoibhe two years later.
Their second son Ruairi was born in 1999 but died just five weeks later from a cot death.
The couple went on to have two more children, Cillian and Léana. But tragedy struck again, when Léana died unexpectedly at the age of seven.
Leana had suddenly developed a cardiac condition just weeks before her death, which came as a terrible shock to the family.
In his current position as Foreign Affairs Minister, Martin has provided regular updates on the status and safety of Irish Defence Forces troops based in Lebanon amid ongoing Middle East conflict.
He had condemned recent Israel missile attacks on areas where UN peacekeepers are stationed as “reprehensible”.