Like the rest of the country, Willie Aird doesn’t know when the General Election is going to be. But he knows one thing. He’s ready.
On a midweek afternoon, he welcomes LaoisToday into his home and farm in the heart of Portlaoise, where he has lived and worked all his life. Just a stone’s throw away is Laois County Council, where his other role as a councillor has consumed him.
Now, as these things are done alphabetically, he’s likely to be the first name on your ballot paper whenever this General Election is held.
The posters are printed and are being stored in a shed in his back yard. He has another poster on a loader that will appear in his field, one side of it looking onto the Abbeyleix Road, the other to Fr Browne Avenue, where the entrance to O’Moore Park is.
He’s ready to fight that election campaign, aiming to go to Leinster House, take a seat in the Dáil and represent the people of Laois on the national stage.
Indeed he has probably been ready for a long time. But it’s only now, a year before he celebrates his 65th birthday, that the opportunity is presenting itself.
Charlie Flanagan’s retirement after a lengthy national political career opened the door for a new Fine Gael name to come to the fore. Last month, at a dramatic convention in the Killeshin Hotel, Aird emerged as the candidate to represent the party in the next General Election.
Nobody can say that he hasn’t served his time. He has been elected in eight Local Elections. He has topped the poll and taken the first seat, on the first count, in the Portlaoise area in each of the last five elections.
He was first elected to Portlaoise Town Commission 45 years ago, in June 1979. As he says in his own good-humoured way, “the first time I voted I voted for myself”.
He was elected to Laois County Council in 1985 as well as the Town Commission. “I had to ask people to vote for me twice on the same day.”
After we take a brief walk around the farm, look at his herd of 100 cows, it’s to the kitchen table for an interview. Though his speech at the convention had to be altered following Cllr Conor Bergin’s decision to step aside in Aird’s favour, his standout line was a Nelson Mandela quote.
“I love autobiographies,” he tells us. “One on Nelson Mandela really caught my attention and the quote ‘A winner is a dreamer who never gives up’. I think that’s a great line.
“I’d never take no for an answer in the council. An official said to me one time after I’d been on to him over and over again, ‘Do you ever give up?!'”
Politics runs deep in his lineage. So does Fine Gael. So too, Portlaoise and Laois. And, of course, farming.
His grandfather, also William, was elected a Cumann na nGaedheal TD in 1927 and died in 1931 during his term in office.
Willie’s grandmother Madge served on Portlaoise town commission and his uncle Billy was a councillor too.
His own father, who died when Willie was in his late teens, had no interest in politics but Willie caught the bug from an early age. “I was always mad about politics. As a young fella, I’d have been putting up posters, things like that.”
As a schoolboy in Portlaoise CBS, he recalls a Christian Brother asking the class who the first Minister of Finance. Willie had the hand up. Michael Collins, he said confidently.
The Christian Brother came down and gave him a bit of a thump, as was the way of that era. “That wasn’t a proper government,” was the retort. Safe to say that Christian Brother wasn’t a Fine Gael man.
When you think about it, he’s probably been canvassing all his life. As dairy farmers in the heart of the town, the Airds sold milk to probably half the town. From a young age, Willie delivered it, out and about meeting families for as long as he can remember.
After he became a councillor, the people came to him with local issues that needed attention. Most mornings after milking there would be people in the yard.
The mobile phone has done away with that to an extent and as he says himself, he gets “worried if the phone stops ringing”.
“I’ve loved every single, solid, day I’ve spent in the council. I love getting a result for people. As I get older, I love seeing families that I have helped over the years prospering. I get great satisfaction from that.
“There was never a vacancy for me to run for Fine Gael before. I was encouraged over the years to run as an Independent but I wouldn’t do that.
“I’ve always been ambitious and as a councillor my dream the whole time was to get chairman’s role. When I eventually got it (in 2004), that was a really great day for me. For years when I was in the Council, Fianna Fáil took everything.
“I didn’t give it (the Dáil) much thought over the years when Charlie was in place. He has been a great representative – as was his father before him – but I remember the day well when he announced his retirement. I thought ‘this has to be my time’.
“There were floods of people on to me saying ‘now is your time to go for it’. There was huge encouragement. This has come very quickly after the Local Elections. I knew the first day I started canvassing for support before the convention that I was getting a good response and I had a good story and there was recognition there.”
He says he wasn’t expecting Conor Bergin to withdraw and wasn’t “privy to everything that was going on”.
“I’m delighted to be able to get the opportunity now to run and if I’m lucky enough to be elected, I’ll be bringing my years of experience from the Council to the Dáil and I’ll be always working and voting for the people of Laois.”
And what of his age? He’s at a stage in life where a lot of people are slowing down, not taking on greater responsibility. Politically, most representatives are getting out at his age, not going in.
“If you look at the two current TDs that are seeking re-election (Sean Fleming and Brian Stanley), I am younger than both of them. Look, I’d love to be in my mid 30s getting this opportunity but nobody has said a single word about it.”
And if he gets in, is he in it for the long haul, or could he be a single term TD? “My grandfather died in the Dáil. None of us know what is in front of us.”
Among the issues he’s deeply passionate about are housing and education. He deals with housing requests on a daily basis in his role as a councillor. He’d love to see a new building for Dunamase College secondary school, an extra primary school in Portlaoise.
It’s put to him that Fine Gael, his party, have been in power since 2011 without sufficiently addressing these issues. “I accept 100% that Fine Gael have been in power. I’m energetic enough to make myself heard. Fine Gael people and the wider community want to see change. I am a change.”
He says as a public representative, “you never go against your hospital or ever support the closing of schools”.
Following the party whip is what a party politician signs up to – though he says he won’t be afraid to pull away if the issue was big enough.
“But I would hope that I’d be able to sort it out before it would ever get to that.”
If he does get elected, he says he’ll have to hire a farm manager to keep that show on the road. Who fills his council seat isn’t one he’s willing to speculate on.
Growing up in Portlaoise, local sporting greats like Pat Critchley, the Prendergasts, Brownes and Bohanes were his vintage. “I played alright, but I was no good,” he laughs. “But those lads are all finished playing a long time and I’m still in the thick of it!”
Over the years he’s served with all the political big hitters locally: Oliver J, Charlie McDonald and Liam Hyland of a previous era to Charlie Flanagan, John Moloney, Brian Stanley and Sean Fleming of more recent times.
He now wants to add his name to that list. The commute to Kildare Street might take a bit longer than it does to get to the Council.
But after waiting all these years, you get the feeling that that won’t bother him in the slightest.
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