Well that’s it, the count­ing has end­ed and my first expe­ri­ence as an elec­tion can­di­date is over. It’s been fun, bruis­ing, expen­sive, invig­o­rat­ing, edu­ca­tion­al and one of the most inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences of my life. Maybe it will be repeat­ed, maybe it won’t, I gen­uine­ly don’t know. But if it is it will need to be dif­fer­ent.

It was a big ask. I was a novice can­di­date in the Euro­peans, 22 oppo­nents (a record num­ber for the con­stituen­cy), big hit­ters in terms of can­di­dates and par­ties. The tim­ing was all wrong for rea­sons you can Google the Irish Times about and the cam­paign was even inter­rupt­ed, and yes fore­see­ably too, for a pre­cious 3 days.

I knew from the out­set that I would need to get into the main­stream debate and the extent to which I suc­ceed­ed or failed in this would deter­mine rel­a­tive suc­cess or fail­ure. I nev­er got into the debate. In the entire cam­paign I got 2 min­utes on RTE TV, 0 min­utes on RTE Radio, a 30 minute debate with Cia­ran Cuffe and Sinead Gib­ney on New­stalk, a slot on Phoenix FM, an EchoCham­ber pod­cast and a most enjoy­able pod­cast with Mario Rosen­stock the day before the vote. That was my broad­cast media expo­sure. Ken­neth Fox did a long inter­view with me for BreakingNews.ie but oth­er long inter­views I gave for arti­cles in the Inde­pen­dent and Exam­in­er were blocked by Edi­to­r­i­al, or who­ev­er.

I’m con­vinced RTE breached their own guide­lines in rela­tion to choos­ing the 8 can­di­dates for the Prime­time Dublin debate. Unique­ly in Dublin they had no Inde­pen­dent on the pan­el. But RTE don’t sur­prise me. New ‘man­age­ment’ or not they still haven’t for­giv­en me for hav­ing the temer­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly clear my name after they defamed me over Apol­lo House. In Don­ny­brook old grudges die hard it seems.

I wasn’t sur­prised by the pauci­ty of cov­er­age. Dis­ap­point­ed maybe giv­en the man­ner in which I co-oper­at­ed with media and nev­er hid away from them (even dur­ing some very dif­fi­cult time and issues) over 25 years. But not sur­prised. So, giv­en that noth­ing was per­fect and I knew it was a mas­sive risk why did I do it?

Well first­ly I’m pas­sion­ate about try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence and since I beat can­cer I haven’t had that oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’ve been liv­ing a half-life, hid­den away and crushed. My lead Oncol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor James Paul O’Neill told me that ‘you didn’t beat can­cer to live half a life’ but half a life I’ve been liv­ing. Here’s a per­son­al sto­ry. You ready?

I’m nor­mal­ly a socia­ble sort. Con­fi­dent. Like peo­ple and like meet­ing peo­ple. But not any­more. Mandy and I alter­nate walk­ing Fri­da in the morn­ing. On Mandy’s days she takes her off to meet oth­er dogs and their own­ers in our com­mu­ni­ty. On my days I take her away off where I think there’ll be no peo­ple. My con­fi­dence got destroyed. It was crushed. Betray­al and aban­don­ment do that and are meant to do that. And it works. I could feel myself shrink­ing and stoop­ing and maybe at times even cow­er­ing.
That’s not me. That’s not Bob­by Ogle’s son. That’s not the per­son Mandy mar­ried 7 short years ago. So I want­ed to feel alive again doing some­thing I was pas­sion­ate about, my val­ues, my beliefs, test­ing myself, get­ting ‘back out there’.

Did it work? Well yes. I’ve nev­er felt more alive, I loved meet­ing peo­ple again, I had great fun with peo­ple who agree with me and also peo­ple who don’t. I told peo­ple NOT to vote for me. I told them in that pub­lished EchoCham­ber Pod­cast and I also told a very nice woman who believes cli­mate change and Covid are hoax’s that she shouldn’t vote for me. I’m not sure such ‘tac­tics’ are in any can­di­date man­u­al but I was deter­mined that if I was to run only once that at least my cam­paign would be true to my val­ues. There’s enough flip flop­ping and pan­der­ing to every angry tweet going on from oth­ers already – not least the Gov­ern­ment par­ties!

We had a night of real chal­lenge but one that was also con­duct­ed respect­ful­ly with 4 oth­er Inde­pen­dent can­di­dates in DCU and I had long chats after­wards with Malachy Steen­son, Gavin Pep­per and their fol­low­ers. Damn it what­ev­er our dif­fer­ences we have to face each oth­er like human beings and talk, dis­cuss them and argue them out. And we did. Vin­cent Browne chaired the for­mal­i­ties as expert­ly as he has ever done any­thing.

Some stats for those inter­est­ed and who might be con­sid­er­ing doing it them­selves. It cost me €11,000 of my own (bor­rowed) mon­ey of which I got just under €3000 back through dona­tions. I had a sol­id team of about 20 peo­ple, more in the­o­ry but the real­ly active ones num­bered about 20. I had an Elec­tion Agent who is a star and was draft­ed in 24 hours before reg­is­tra­tion after my actu­al Elec­tion Agent and Cam­paign Man­ag­er quit on me at the last minute when she realised the size of the task. She tried to get me to quit too. Not a chance and I’m glad I didn’t. I’d still be ‘hid­ing’ if I had. I’m done with that car­ry on but more of that lat­er. I pro­duced 45000 leaflets and An Post deliv­ered the nor­mal 465,000 fly­ers which they cen­sored remov­ing my views on Israel’s geno­cide in Gaza. I’ve made a for­mal com­plaint about that which is cur­rent­ly under inves­ti­ga­tion. I haven’t ful­ly decid­ed whether to com­plain about RTE or not. Oh, and I put up 150 posters. To put that in con­text Aod­han O’Riordain had 5000 up and Bar­ry Andrews had 10,000 up. I think Sinn Fein had even more. But you see I had to pay for mine. So 150 it was.

It’s not an even play­ing field as what I have set out demon­strates and it could be made more so. A ratio­nal thing would be to ban posters but they give those with the mon­ey and pow­er such an advan­tage that they’ll nev­er allow that. Anoth­er idea would be to run a pub­lic infor­ma­tion ad show­ing peo­ple how to vote. It was quite stag­ger­ing see­ing the mis­takes peo­ple made on bal­lot papers ren­der­ing their votes invalid and its clear the phe­nom­e­non was as bad across all 3 con­stituen­cies. Also the order of the names should be ran­domised on the bal­lot paper, not sim­ply list­ed in alpha­bet­i­cal order. A com­put­er should do this before the elec­tion. It was amaz­ing to see vot­ing papers that were sim­ply marked 1,2,3 from the first name down. In con­stituen­cies were bal­lot papers can be two feet long it’s ridicu­lous.

None of these mea­sures would have ben­e­fit­ted me in any mate­r­i­al way or would make my vote any greater but I do think it is valid to record my obser­va­tions and I do so sim­ply for that rea­son. Over­all the 4 most pop­u­lar can­di­dates won by a com­fort­able mea­sure and the sys­tem, for all its imper­fec­tions and its stag­ger­ing slow­ness, worked and pro­duced the result that vot­ers want­ed. What struck me, and has done for some time now, was the bul­ly­ing of me by the left. I already knew I was some­how the one work­er the left deemed not deserv­ing of work­place sol­i­dar­i­ty and it was actu­al­ly said to me before the elec­tion by a friend and con­fi­dante. I was also told not to run. That I was ‘split­ting the left vote’. I’m not sure what that is myself. Is it vot­ing with AfD and Hun­gar­i­an MEP’s on pro­tect­ing impe­ri­al­ist Rus­sia? Or is it vot­ing for a par­ty that have always opposed left uni­ty on any terms but their own? I see oth­ers accus­ing PBP (who I don’t vote for and have very lit­tle rea­son to like) of some­how not being enti­tled to run either. This is the same PBP who run in every elec­tion, who are a prop­er par­ty with prop­er rules and an actu­al con­fer­ence and a prop­er web­site and who allow for open mem­ber­ship and make them­selves actu­al­ly pub­licly account­able as a par­ty, and who – what­ev­er I or any­one else thinks of them – have an absolute right to run in every elec­tion. They even offered oth­ers (not me, see below) a vot­ing pact but it got thrown back in their faces. To argue that they had no right to run a can­di­date is out and out bul­ly­ing but that’s what the claimed left do most in Ire­land to those that ques­tion from with­in. I can’t speak for else­where but it is def­i­nite­ly the case here.

As to me? I’m told that I’m ‘can­celled’. A few veiled threats have come my way too. C’est la vie. I didn’t need this elec­tion to teach me what I was deal­ing with, what ‘the left’ are capa­ble of, the bile, the tox­i­c­i­ty, the faux claims of ‘sol­i­dar­i­ty’ and the equal­ly faux con­cern for ‘work­ers rights’.

I hope our 4 just elect­ed MEP’s put actu­al work­ers’ rights at the top of their agen­da. I hope they bring the lessons of gen­uine pub­lic hous­ing in Europe back to Dublin. I hope, and I know in Lynn Boylan’s case and per­haps oth­ers too, that the peo­ple of Pales­tine will con­tin­ue to have Irish friends in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment call­ing out Israeli geno­cide and the con­tin­u­ing Nak­ba. And I hope over the next 5 years they, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, that they actu­al­ly do some­thing for Dublin this time. Or at least turn up here. Maybe open gen­uine con­stituen­cy offices and hold gen­uine pub­lic meet­ings bring­ing exam­ples of some bet­ter prac­tices in Europe on health­care, child­care and drug treat­ment to Dublin so that vot­ers can learn to demand these things here too.

As to me? We’ll see how the ‘can­celling’ goes. Life’s a jour­ney and every day is a school day. This has been a great, great expe­ri­ence. Real, sober­ing, life affirm­ing. I’m tak­ing Fri­da off now to meet the oth­er dogs and their own­ers in our com­mu­ni­ty. Onwards!’