Jim Higgins interview: The Mayo political heavyweight who is a born survivor

by Dr. Richard Martin

I was first introduced to Jim Higgins at the 2024 General Election in the TF by John Lohan (FG regional organiser), who was a year ahead of me in school.

Jim Higgins was first elected to Mayo County Council in 1979. He was then appointed to the Senate in 1981. In 1987 he was elected to Dáil Éireann. In the FG wipe out of 2002 he lost his seat.

In 2004 he was elected as an MEP representing the North-West constituency. He retired from active political life in 2014.

By any metric this is a political heavyweight of national prominence. A statesman. Recently, we met at the Mayo Fine Gael AGM, which he chaired, and afterwards we agreed to sit down and do an interview the following Saturday in Palestine House.

RM: I met Al McDonnell this morning on the street, and I told him I was meeting you and he said you know each other a long time.

JH: A long time, I really like Al, a guy with great principle.

RM: And I said to him, I said if you were talking to Jim Higgins, what question would you ask him? And he said straight off the bat, ‘Ask him about 2002, the general election’.

JH: Oh yeah, the general election, 87 votes.

RM: 87 votes.

JH: Between Enda and myself, and it looked right up until the wire that I was actually home and dry, because I think, you know, Enda would acknowledge that he had his resignation speech ready. And what happened was, it's like a card game, the elimination was in the wrong groove for me, in that it was Frank Chambers who was eliminated, rather than Tom Moffatt. If Tom Moffatt had been eliminated instead of Frankie Chambers, I would have been elected, and the rest is history.

RM: Yeah, where was Tom Moffatt based?

JH: Ballina. Because of the fact that, traditionally it was East Mayo and West Mayo, and there was a natural alignment. Even though we opened up the constituency to a five-seater from two threes, there was the old psychological alignment between Ballina, Foxford, Swinford, Charlestown, Ballyhaunis, Kiltimagh, Claremorris, right down that linear line, the whole way down, and it showed in the elections when it came to eliminations. Surpluses or whatever it was, you would see that there was that natural affinity to the area, that tradition was your area, so that's the way it was.

RM: Yeah, I think we saw it even recently in the last general election. With eliminations it all comes down to the geographical vote.

JH: It does, it does.

RM: It's crucial.

JH: It is, it is, very much so.

RM: So I think what happened, that Frank Chambers was eliminated on the seventh count, and Enda Kenny got 600 votes. He was behind you on the first count, you were ahead by 24 votes, you both got 9.2% of the vote, and he got 600 votes from Frank Chambers, and you got 120, so it was remarkably tight.

JH: It was.

RM: I suppose the thing is, at that time Fine Gael were wiped out nationally.

JH: I mean, we ended up in a situation, we were so decimated at that stage, we'd only had three TDs in Dublin, and there were the two Mitchells, Gay Mitchell, Olivia Mitchell, and Richard Bruton.

I mean, we were absolutely wiped out.

RM: Wiped out, yeah.

JH: The front bench was wiped out in virtually one fell swoop, you know, and as a result, I mean, it required a major rebuilding, and that's why I often think, even though a lot of people would say what Al McDonnell said, and ask the same question, you know, I do think there's such a thing as destiny, because I have to say, I don't know whether I would have had the energy that Enda had.

He and Liam Coady took to the roads of Ireland, and they resuscitated a party that was on death's door, literally, and he breathed confidence back into the party again and bit by bit by bit, incrementally, he rebuilt the party. You know, so it's destiny, and I don't know whether I would have had, even though people would say it was either he or me to lead the party.

RM: I think that's it, because only 20 TDs were returned in 2002, so if you had been returned instead of Kenny, you would have been the leader. Do you have any regrets?

JH: No, because basically the party comes first with me. I mean, I came under major pressure that night to go for a recount, you know, and when you're talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of votes all bundled together in 50s, you know, mistakes can, mistakes do happen. I might have been tempted if it had been a Fianna Fáil contender that was against me, and there was that small margin of 87 votes, but because it was Enda Kenny, a colleague, and so I wouldn't do it, I couldn't do it. I came under tremendous pressure to look for a recount, but I wouldn't do it, and I couldn't do it.

I'm not sorry I didn't do it, do you know what I mean? And, you know, I look back now at the time and I say, look, you know, destiny has designed. I mean, I got to Europe.

RM: Yeah, just from talking to you, I can see that there's a huge, you have a huge respect for Enda Kenny.

JH: I have, and I have a very clear memory from the point of view of the building blocks, small, little, incremental, the opinion polls narrowing, narrowing, narrowing.

And I remember being out in Breaffy House for Africa Day in 2009. And Enda was at one end of the table. We were the only two European members that turned up.

And I was in Europe, and Enda was the leader of the party. And it was Africa Day, and you had all of the people in their African garb and so on, from the different African countries, you know. And he sent me a text across the table, an opinion poll, which showed for the first time ever that I can remember that in an opinion poll that we went ahead of Fianna Fáil, you know.

And I just gave him the thumbs up, you know. We're there.

We're there. It's beginning. It's beginning to happen, you know, and it did, you know.

And one of the proudest moments, politically, was I was doing all day in 2011 in TG4 Studios in Connemara, and by two o'clock, Fine Gael already had 24 seats. Fianna Fáil had one seat, and that was Seamus Kirk, the outgoing Ceann Comhairle, you know.

RM: Just going back then, because it's really interesting, but Kenny, okay, he had two kind of major turning points.

It was the general election in 2002 against you, 87 votes, but then there was a heave against him in 2010, and I remember it well, and it was a dramatic week. And it looked like he might be gone, because I think the shadow bench, the majority of them were gone against him.

JH: Oh, they were.

RM: They were with Bruton.

JH: They were. They were.

RM: What's your take on that?

JH: It was one of the nastiest parliamentary party meetings I was ever at.

RM: Yeah, so who'd have been at this parliamentary party meeting?

JH: Yeah, well, I mean, the odds were stacked against him in that the young Turks were absolutely determined they were going to take him out.

Now, the stupidity of it was, at the same time, in parallel with that, there was a no confidence vote against the government, against the Fianna Fáil government.

And yet our own people, out of sheer nothing other than ruthless ambition, decided they were going to go for Kenny.

RM: Why do you think they did that?

JH: I think it was being stoked up.

And they used the stalking horse Richard Bruton, in other words, from the old guard, you know what I mean?

RM: Do you think it was just personal ambition?

JH: It was. It was.

RM: They saw a huge opening, Fine Gael are going to get there. They're going to be in power. And this is our chance to take over.

JH: They saw, yeah, they saw, yeah.

RM: Would you see it as treacherous?

JH: Well, I wouldn't.

I mean, these things happen. That's the nature of politics. No, I wouldn't use the word treacherous.

I think it was, you know, overweening ambition is the way I'd describe it. Overweening ambition, you know what I mean? That they felt that he was old school, possibly. And that they wanted to give the party, what you call, a modern, younger veneer, you know? And that's what it was, you know?

But I mean, and we will never know, but Padraig McCormack was the only one.

He was the chairman of the parliamentary party at the time. Yeah. But I mean, it was as rough a parliamentary party meeting as I was ever at.

And I was at them over the years.

And that didn't make any sense, whatever, to try and unseat the man who had made it all happen. I mean, I looked at each one of them individually in my speech, and it was a rough speech.

And I just said to them, individually, you would not be here only for Enda Kenny.

You would not be here. You would not be here. But the best speech of the lot was the late Shane McEntee.

Shane McEntee gave a speech that I, well, at that stage, the particular room that we were in had no ventilation. And the condensation was literally nearly coming from the ceiling.

And the last three speakers were Bernard Durkan, myself, and Shane McEntee. And McEntee gave a speech that I will never, ever forget.

He said he was coming in the Navan Road. Yeah. And he was reflecting on what was about to happen.

And he had passed Glasnevin.

And he turned around, he parked his car, he went in, and he knelt down at Michael Collins' grave. And he said, I'll tell you one thing, he said, we're not going to let the members of Fine Gael do to Enda Kenny what our own people did to Michael Collins. And it was one of those passionate, really passionate speeches, you know.

Yeah, you had to see it, you had to be there.

It was in the moment.

RM: How long did that meeting last?

JH: Three, four hours.

RM: Wow.

And did you vote at the end of it?

JH: Yeah.

RM: I've read that the majority of the TDs went with Bruton, but it was the vote from the MEPs and the Senators that turned the tide.

JH: It was.

RM: How many MEP votes were there?

JH: Four, I think. Who was it? Yeah. Sean Kelly. Mairead McGuinness, Avril and myself.

RM: And when you gave that speech, who did you direct your speech at?

JH: All of them. All of the Young Turks. Varadkar, Coveney, Lucinda Creighton…….

But there were a lot of people who just held their silence at that as well, you know what I mean? Silently watching what was going on and observing how the house was going to basically end up, you know, from the point of view of their own political welfare, you know?

RM: What was Michael Ring’s speech like?

JH: Brilliant.

RM: What did he say?

JH: I can't remember, but I know that he made... He, I, you know, a number of us took the gloves off.

I mean, this is bare knuckle fighting…………

Ronan Waldron, the retired surgeon in Mayo General Hospital, once said to me that he knows within 30 seconds whether he’s dealing with an honours student during the Final Med examinations.

When we sat down in my kitchen, I knew straight away within seconds I was talking to a political heavyweight who leaves the bluff and bluster to lesser lights.

It was a real privilege to sit down with him for an hour and hear his political journey first hand. National frontline politics is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t possess an inner core of steel you’re in the wrong arena. You won’t survive.

If Jim Higgins is anything he’s a survivor.