#GE2020: Suzanne Doyle, candidate for Fianna Fail
"I contested the selection convention, and won it," she says. "Then I decided to wait until the campaign was called before starting any canvassing."
With a wry smile, she confesses that that may not have been a good idea. "I thought that canvassing would interfere with my council work. But this is now a very short campaign, and for any first-timer that is highly inhibiting anyway."
The aim is to pick up a third seat for the party that she joined only because family friend Seán Ó Fearghaill nominated her to take his council seat when the dual mandate was abolished. That meant elected TDs could no longer also be councillors.
"I had been community active, but not involved with any party. I'm happy, though, to be in Fianna Fail. It's a very broad umbrella that has space for people. And I believe that democracies should reflect the broad spectrum of the public."
In the current contest, Kildare Town-based Suzanne Doyle knows she's being squeezed. Newbridge, the largest town in Kildare South, also has the most candidates. On the other side, Monasterevin has a hard-working and respected councillor running for Sinn Fein, and the inclusion of part of County Laois this time around isn't any help. For Kilcullen support, she is limited in visibility, not having political connection to the town as a councillor until it was shifted to the Kildare Newbridge MD last May.
"I do have a Kilcullen connection, though. I was a boarder in Cross and Passion College, before it became co-educational. Initially I didn't like it — I was sent because my family in Kildare were very busy looking after the pub — but I now have very fond memories. And the nuns helped give me values."
It probably wasn't just the nuns. Growing up in a family business, the Five Jockeys pub in Kildare, is also how you get values. You learn that hard work is necessary to keep going. And if nothing else, over the almost two decades she has been a councillor, Suzanne Doyle's work ethic is widely recognised.
It is 18 years in which she also learned how the job will change the person. Early on, she says she was somewhat 'timid' as she worked out how local representation operated. "Then I decided that I'd be better just saying what I felt, and be prepared to make a fool of myself." That shift gained her a reputation of being outspoken, even contrarian. But she also knew that more was needed.
"I learned that as a local politician you can make noise very easily, but to get things done you have to examine where can you really make a difference? As a councillor, the options for that aren't huge, but you learn to focus on specific things."
For her, these were either issues that drive the community, or that the community responds to. She says she's very much a 'projects' person, and those, inter much alia, have included involvement in housing associations, promoting mortgages to rent for people at risk of losing their homes, developing 'The Thoroughbred Run' for fitness and fundraising and highlighting the county's equine industry. In her home town, helping develop the Christmas 'Reinder Hospital' initiative is another potentially small thing that grew.
"Some of the things I was involved in have been kind of under the radar, but they are very satisfying. I'm also a firm supporter of developing Kildare's tourism potential. We have the amazing resource of the equine industry, of course. And we have heritage as an important part of the Ireland's Ancient East. We shouldn't look at tourism in terms of Newbridge or Kildare ... because when people come here they don't look at whether they are in one town or another. We have to look at it collectively."
Creating local jobs is another point of her focus, and Cllr Doyle acknowledges the benefits of a Local Enterprise Office that is both 'proactive and productive'. "The recent announcement of jobs by Odyssey VC, for instance, is a great boost. I believe that's the kind of thing that can be replicated in towns throughout the county." Though creating IT jobs like that does also depend on there being adequate broadband, for instance. "I'm committed on that, broadband needs to be considered just as critical an infrastructure as electricity."
Such infrastructure is also critical to providing a better balance of life for families with both parents working. Broadband, and support from the workplace, can help deliver people from the long commute. Another issue close to her heart. "If somebody can work from home, the working day is actually 9-5. Not coming home a couple of hours later and trying to add family life at the end."
Suzanne Doyle is single and has no children. A fact of life that she acknowledges has given her the time to be totally involved on the projects which have been the timeline of her life to date. "In a way, I suppose those projects are my 'children'. And growing up in a business family, being in business, I didn't go into politics for self interest, though the temptation to do that is enormous."
The political career, the 'unexpected path' as she puts it, did see her evolve from those first years of being apparently 'contrarian'. She learned things. "About teamwork, for instance. I used to get an idea and run with it, and then I learned that I have certain qualities that are very good, and certain weaknesses, and those gaps have to be filled in. That's how you get things done. Nothing is possible without convincing others, building the team. Committees can be very frustrating ... but they are places where you can bring people along ... and you'll fail if you don’t bring people along."
For somebody who makes a very strong impact wherever she's at, Suzanne describes herself as a 'solitary' person. "It was one of the reasons I didn't stay at University, there were too many people, and I realised it just wasn't for me." When she's not doing local representing, she likes to read, loves the cinema, and will often head off at the weekend to go for a walk on one of her favourite beaches. None of which are happening just now.
"For these few weeks, there are people managing my every hour," she says ruefully, before finally picking up the phone that had been vibrating frantically through the scarce forty minutes she'd managed to put aside for this meeting.
We had talked about many other things, what democracy is, the proportion of women in politics and why that is so, and more. But this election is about the person putting themselves forward, decided by the people, and not the grander philosophies.
Suzanne Doyle's personal philosophy is very much about those people.
Editor's Note: This is one of a series of profiles of the candidates. All candidates in the Kildare South constituency have been invited to make themselves available for interview for the Diary.
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