From Leinster championship to a run for Leinster House

Nobody can accuse former Westmeath footballer Alan Mangan of making life easy for himself.

Not only is the 2004 Leinster championship winner set to move into a new home that he’s building in Castletown Geoghegan within the coming months, he and his wife Corrine will also welcome their fourth child into the world in early January.

If having a new baby and moving house weren’t enough to contend with, he has set himself the not inconsiderable task of retaining Labour’s seat in Longford Westmeath at the next general election.

He will replace Deputy Willie Penrose on the Labour ticket following the Ballynacargy native’s decision to step down from national politics after serving the people of Longford Westmeath for more than 25 years.

The news that Alan was replacing one of the most dominant figures on the local political landscape in living memory was a shock to many.

He admits that he too was surprised when he got a call from Deputy Penrose more than 18 months ago asking if he would be interested in a life in politics.

He also acknowledges that many will view Labour’s decision to select a high profile former intercounty star to contest the next general election as both a calculated attempt to retain a seat that they nearly lost in 2016 – Deputy Penrose just edged out the Sinn Féin candidate Paul Hogan on the 15th count – and a sign that once formidable local party machine is not what it once was.

He may be a political novice, but he says that he comes from a long line of Labour supporters including his great grandfather Patrick Clark was a county councillor for the party in the 1940s. His ancestor’s “claim to fame”, Mangan jokes, was getting thrown out of a meeting where Eamon De Valera was one of the speakers.

While he has no plans of getting thrown out of meetings, Mangan says that he has some of his great grandfather’s “gutsiness”, a quality that will come in very handy when the battle for Leinster House begins in earnest.

“Down through the years, my family would be very much a Labour family. Willie is a family friend and in that regard we would have went to a lot of Labour outings. I would be very close to Willie and his wife Ann and three daughters.

“I’m not going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes when Willie rang me I said ‘wow’. I was shocked. I’d have been into politics but never would I have thought about going into this. They gave me six months to think about it. I went away and went to a lot of things that Labour had going on around the country. I listened. I never spoke, and I came to the conclusion that I can help my local area.

“I’m not in it to make a name for Alan Mangan, I’m in it to help my local area. I can see going forward that I can help people who are in disarray or who need help getting things done. If I can get in, which I’m hoping to do, I can help these people. When I train a team I’m doing it to help them get better and in this regard I can do it in Leinster House.”

Sporting references pepper Mangan’s interview with the Westmeath Examiner – which is understandable. An intercounty footballer and club hurler of note, ‘Buddha’ has one of the most impressive GAA CVs of any Westmeath Gael.

In addition to playing a central role in the provincial success of 2004, he was also a member of the Westmeath U21 squad that won the All Ireland Championship in 1999 and was joint manager along with Peter Leahy of the Westmeath Ladies team that won the Intermediate All Ireland title in 2009. In recent years he was also one of Michael Ryan’s selectors during his tenure as manager of the senior hurling team.

Away from the world of sport, Mangan has had plenty of other life experiences that he says have informed his decision to run for political office.

Working life

For the last seven years he has worked with the HSE’s Community Alcohol and Drugs Services (CADS) in Tullamore.

“I’m working with vulnerable people who are battling addictions. I’ve worked with some wonderful people. They are just people who have made a few bad decisions and got themselves into a difficult position.

“I’m trying to help them and I enjoy every minute of it. I can see going forward that hopefully I can help a whole variety of people [if elected].”

He has also experienced the vagaries of owning your own business. In the mid-noughties he opened a men’s clothes shop in Mullingar but it closed within a year, while in recent years he opened a cryotherapy clinic in unit in Columb Barracks, which has since moved to Athlone.

He didn’t realise it at the time, but he says that his mixed fortunes in business have stood to him in the long term. The recession may be a distant memory in Dublin, but if the rural economy is to prosper, he believes that there needs to be more supports for start-up businesses.

“Young people who have good ideas and want to start up businesses in rural areas – there needs to be incentives to give something a go. I have given businesses a go myself and they haven’t worked out. So be it. If I could go back I wouldn’t do those things again but I have learned from those experiences.

“The cryotherapy spa is down in Athlone and it’s still working. I was only working two days a week [ when it opened]. I had to chance my arm at something. The local Enterprise Board were very good to me and gave me a dig-out to get myself going. The likes of other people need to get tax breaks. Some people start businesses and within a few months they are hit with rates. They should be given the incentive that for the first two or three years their rates are free.

“In this day and age a lot of young people want to work for themselves but they are afraid to give it a go.”

Preparing to move into a new house, he says that it is a damning indictment of the government that there are so many people struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

“I was in Mullingar on a recent Friday night. I went up the bank link at around 11 o’clock and there was a young man asleep under it. He was no more than 17 or 18. I went down to a chipper and bought him fish and chips and brought them back to him. It’s sad to see.

“The government need to really push the housing end of things. We haven’t built near as many houses or done things like take over houses on the likes of AirBnB to make sure we are keeping people off the street. To see a 17-year-old on the streets of Mullingar is heartbreaking.”

The homelessness problem is exacerbated by the scarcity of rental accommodation. Couples in their late 20s and 30s who up until recently made the transition from renter to homeowner are unable to do so due to a combination of high rents making it difficult to save for a deposit and the banks’ more stringent criteria for people applying for mortgages.

More should be done to help young couples in this predicament, Mangan believes.

“You see people who have full time jobs and they can’t get a mortgage. I really think that if you rented somewhere for 10 years and have proof that you didn’t miss a payment, that that should be as good as a deposit.

Other issues that Mangan will be focusing on when he is campaigning include the lack of IDA investment in the Mullingar area and the need for more supports for farmers, especially after one of the worst 12 months for the sector in living memory.

Support for carers

Like the man he hopes to replace in Leinster House, Mangan says that if he is elected he will work hard to improve the conditions of Westmeath’s carers.

“Our carers are saving the country millions, getting close to billions. At the minute they are getting €240 a week, which is peanuts, compared to if my mother was put into a nursing nurse. It’s costing anything from €1,000 to €1,500 a week. We are saving by giving them €240 a week.

“A lot has to be done. These people in my eyes are heroes. I know a lot of people who care for their relatives. They probably should be on more money. They shouldn’t be means-tested. They should definitely get tax breaks. When you do the figures and see how much they are saving the country, it should be looked at.

Happy to be in a position to raising his family in his home village, Mangan says that one of the major stumbling blocks to revitalising rural communities is the poor broadband service in many areas.

“I was chatting to a man the other day and he said that he was hoping to work from home last Friday. On Friday morning I gave him a call to see how he was going and he said that he couldn’t do it because his broadband wasn’t working. He had to go and travel to Dublin as normal. He said that if his broadband was good, he’d be able to work from home two days a week.

Describing his own broadband service as “brutal... always cutting in and out”, Mangan says that if the government are serious about supporting rural communities, a raft of measures need to be introduced to make living in the country a viable option.

“Our 3G [mobile phone] coverage in terrible in Castletown and I’m sure its the same in other parts of Longford and Westmeath. Some people can’t afford to have a landline. I think the state should be running the provision of broadband.”

Rural Ireland

“Country schools, country shops, country post offices, country pubs need people who moved out to move back. People like myself, where I am, back building in my own area. We need people my age and younger who have young families to move back to their areas to keep them going.

“Unless these people are able to get a mortgage and get planning – it’s nearly as hard to get planning as it is to get a mortgage – they won’t come back.”

This month’s presidential election will see Mangan out on the campaign trail to try to get Michael D Higgins re-elected. He admits, that the timing is good for a political newbie as it gives him an opportunity to hone his campaigning skills before the race for Leinster House gets under way.

When the election does come around, and most commentators believe we won’t have too long to wait, Mangan says that he intends to use his contacts from the GAA to his advantage.

“That’s the plan, whether they come out with me is another thing,” he laughed. “I’m not going to put anyone under pressure. If they want to come that’s great.

“I was lucky enough to play Railway Cup for three years with Leinster and I played with about 10 or 11 Longford boys.

“I’d like to think that I would be friendly enough with those lads to give them a call to see if they could help me out or push me in the right direction. I’m not going to be hounding lads to come out with me though.”

It seems highly unlikely that Longford’s voters will leave the county without a TD for a second successive Dáil term and many commentators believe that Labour’s seat is the most vulnerable.

Mangan says that he makes it to Leinster House, the achievement will rank above anything he has done in the world of sport. It would also repay the faith shown in him by his “great tutor” Deputy Penrose, he says.

“It’s a totally different area to what I was used to. I will be looking for support from people who don’t know one of end of hurl or football from another. I’m not in this for anything else but to help the people from Longford and Westmeath.

“If they put their faith in me, I hope to think I will be able to repay it by hopefully being as good as Willie has been for the constituency for the last 35 years.”