I HAD arranged to meet Sinn Féin councillor Tom Collopy on a real wet and windy Limerick day, the kind of day where even the ducks were hunkered down for cover.
It was one of those special ‘Lanes of Limerick’ days, the kind that feels like all the McCourts in heaven are having a little tinkle down on top of us. One of those days, that if I’m honest, that always fill my heart with pride to be from the Treaty City.
Sure enough, the sky is a charcoal grey and the dampness would cut through you like a knife to leave a puddle in your soul, but somehow, it feels like home. To me, it always seems the most honest and true reflection of Limerick’s fierce personality when it is bucketing down hard.
The rain is biblical, falling sideways, as it often insists on doing on these waterlogged city streets. It has a real wily persistence to it. The weather is so bad, in some parts at least, that they have decided, as now is the fashion, to name it.
As I make my way down to City Hall, I think to myself that the weather never seemed to matter so much before they started naming it. We just got on with things and took it in our stride. Now the weather, like everything else, comes with EU health and safety regulations.
Limerick through and through
Cllr Collopy is right on cue to meet me on Merchant’s Quay moments after I arrive and we make our way up to Nicholas Street to find a place to take shelter from the downpour.
Stix, a well-loved establishment in this part of the city, is closed so we make our way further down the street to Katie Daly’s public house, which is just opening its doors when we arrive. Coffee is ordered and we take ours seats in a quiet corner with The Cranberries serenely serenading us from the speakers.
Cllr Collopy is a man I took an instant liking to after he was co-opted onto Limerick City and County Council in May last year to fill the seat vacated by John Costelloe.
With his hectic council and work life, we have had to reschedule this rendezvous a couple of times. But Tom, being the old school gent he is, is true to his word and we finally get together as the rain makes its presence felt outside.
As our coffee is served, Tom tells me about his childhood and how he was initially reared on Nicholas Street before moving to Assumpta Park on King’s Island.
“My dad was Stephen Collopy, he was from what we now know as Vizes Court near St Joseph’s Street. His father, also Tom, was with the fledgling ESB which he joined soon after the formation of the Free State. My grandfather’s people came from Collopy’s Cross in Patrickswell. There are still some of the family there to this day,” he says, painting a picture of his Limerick heritage.
“Tom, my grandfather, was active during the War of Independence, as were some of his brothers. I believe he took no part in the Civil War, because, according to my dad, he said, ‘I was not going to turn my gun on comrades who spent time in the hedgerows and ditches with me at a time when Ireland needed all its men to arms’.
“I never knew my grandfather. I was very young when he died. I remember being promised his IRA service medal as I grew up by my grandmother Catherine, sadly I never got it. I’m not sure where it is to this day,” he tells me.
Tom’s mother was Ann Williams, her family hailed from St Mary’s Park.
“As the name implies there’s Welsh blood there. I believe that our maternal great grandfather arrived on our shores with the British army, met my great grandmother, so the story goes, and the rest as they say is history.
“My paternal grandfather, Sammy Williams, was a plumber, a man who, strangely enough for his generation, never drank alcohol. I had a particular strong bond with this man, and he and my maternal grandmother were responsible for shaping me, in a lot of respects, as an individual.”
The City North representative is the eldest of 10 children, six sisters and three brothers. The youngest of his siblings, John Edward (affectionately known as Eddie), died in a traffic accident just before his 17th birthday. He admits this was a loss his family never really came to terms with.
‘I have never held a grudge and I don’t intend to start now’
I first encountered Tom on the day of his co-option onto Limerick City and County Council last year.
I was instantly struck by the sincerity and warmth of his welcome in the Dooradoyle chambers. Councillors from across the political divide spoke very highly of their new colleague. But what struck me the most were Cllr Collopy’s own words.
“I have never held a grudge and I don’t intend to start now. I respect each and every one of you. You are all here to serve your communities the same as me. I respect that despite whatever policy differences we may have,” he said.
Tom is surprised when I tell him this made an impression on me. I was struck by his common decency, that here we had a man clearly lead by his own moral compass, a man with good old-fashioned ethics and values. You couldn’t help but warm to him.
When I ask where he gets his obvious old school values from, the Sinn Féin man gives much of the credit to his maternal grandfather.
“He left here during World War Two, but he was of an age that he couldn’t join an infantry unit so they made him a guard in a prison of war camp in England. I believe he was there for about four years of the war and he said that he had nothing but respect for the ordinary Wehrmacht, the ordinary German soldier that came through the camps,” he explains.
“Where he was they didn’t deal with SS types, but they were guys that were told that ‘your country is at war, you are going into the military’. Most of these guys would have been captured in France and places like that.
“When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They only literally lived 10 minutes’ walk from us anyway, so invariably I started spending time there and started staying weekends and then I was staying there for longer periods of time.”
The sparkie with military ambitions
Tom went to school in St Mary’s National School on King’s Island, before moving onto St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ School, known locally as ‘Creagh Lane’. After that he moved to the Municipal Tech Institute.
Tom’s father was to quash his ambitions of joining the military on the very day he finished secondary school.
“I was always driving towards the military, but he wasn’t having that. I remember finishing school on a Thursday to be told that I would be starting work as an apprentice electrician the following Monday. That was bit of a surprise to me, but I said I’d try it anyway. Now as it turns out, it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made because I have never been idle a day in my life.”
Tom comes from a long line of electricians. His grandfather, father, and younger brother, Sam, were all sparkies.
“In those days it was five years, part of which was studying electrical theory and practice in the School of Electrical Engineering. Of all the educational establishments that I attended, this was without doubt the one that I really came into myself. There were some really excellent educators in what was the forerunner to the Limerick Institute of Technology,” he recalls.
In May 2005, Tom left a Dublin-based company where he had worked as the service supervisor for 27 years, covering the West of Ireland, and set up his own business.
The company’s main business is electromechanical service engineering, but it now has a sales arm also.
“I spent most of the first year doing the service calls, administration, and the books, but it became very evident early on that I was burning the candle at both ends, that had to change. The company has grown steadily over the years, and it now employs, including myself, 10 full and part time staff.”
A proud father of three children (Darragh, Brian, and Róisín), he spent his free time during his youth in the boy scouts. Looking back, he considers this a fortuitous move in that, like his friends who were going through a rebellious streak, the uniformed discipline associated with scouting worked for him.
“I initially started scouting, and all that entailed, with the troop in St Mary’s parish. In my mid teens I transferred to the the two troops in the parish of St John’s in St John’s Square. I spent some years there, ending up as the scout master of one of the troops. I loved the outdoor aspects of scouting and that in itself engendered a lifelong love of all that nature has to offer.”
‘Collopy breaks leg, but is still running’
Then, in his late twenties, Collopy joined the Irish Army Reserve in Sarsfield Barracks, opting to join the Military Police.
“The FCA had a military police detachment at that time in every corps area, so there was so few military policemen,” he tells me.
“There was two types of military policemen in the Irish Army. You had the garrison police, who carried out their duties in each of the barracks, and there was the field police, which were the FCA unit. We had the same powers of arrest and detention as the regular police and we used to relieve them to give them a break in their duties in the barracks.
“I had a friend in the FCA. He was in the engineers, and my logical home in the FCA or army reserve would have been the engineers, but they were looking for military policemen and I applied for it. I liked the discipline associated with it. I liked the order. I never had a problem with that aspect of things.”
While Tom was not from an overtly political family, three things in particular he believes had a hand in molding and directing him towards Republican socialism.
These, he reveals, included the strong Republican ethos of a Christian Brother, access to a small library on social and Irish history, and his own firm belief that no section of society should be left behind in a modern wealthy country.
“This was the main reason I left the Army Reserve. Membership was not compatible with membership of a political party, as I had decided that Sinn Féin were the only party taking social issues and the eventual reunification of the country seriously.
“Like all members of the party, I started in a cumann (branch) on Limerick’s Northside. I was the cumann chairman within about four years, after which I stood down to become the chair of the Comhairle Ceantair, the constituency officer board. I ran for the party in the 2009 Local Elections, but I fell from a ladder putting up a poster and broke my right leg two weeks before polling. I remember the headline from the local press at the time — ‘Collopy breaks leg, but is still running’.
“I was not elected on that occasion, but I was happy with the first preferences I received on the day. I have always worked behind the scenes since the 2009 Local Elections and had left the day-to-day political aspirations of the party in the hands of the elected representatives. In recent times I am elated by the number of young articulate people joining the party, and the number of women in particular joining our ranks.”
‘Don’t shoot the messenger’
The job of a councillor, Tom confesses, has its ups and downs like any profession, but by and large one balances out the other.
“This job gives you a coalface view of how tough life can be for those on lower and middle incomes. Wage structures have not kept pace with the cost of living and this is evident in the lack of spending power of our people who have limited means – particularly in some of the Regeneration areas where residents contend nothing has changed for them and they are as despondent now as they were before it began.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, these are the thoughts of real people,” he interjects.
“I also find that people are having difficulties in areas one would regard as affluent, what with rising mortgage and interest rates, childcare costs, etc.
“Housing is the one issue I deal with more than any other, followed closely by maintenance issues. Some of the cases, particularly with regard to overcrowding, are hard to get one’s head around. This has been exacerbated in recent times by people who would have regarded themselves as safe in rented accommodation but now find themselves, if lucky, sharing with relatives, sometimes making a bad overcrowding situation worse, or ‘couch surfing’ with friends.
“I’m a firm believer in the school of thought which dictates that in local politics the local representatives, within reason, and with party ethos in mind, should work together for the benefit of the ward they serve. It may not always work, but unity in numbers can open more doors and make officialdom sit up and take notice of issues pertinent to the ward when all or most of the representatives are singing from the same hymn sheet.”
Before we prepare to head back outside and brave the elements, on a day where the high stool seems like a much better option, Tom offers one last nugget.
“I will finish with a quote I often heard my father say, a man whom I was very close too, who unfortunately died at the age of 52: ‘We are here for a good time, not a long time’, and with that in mind I try to remember his short life, in my occasional sojourns to the relaxing and friendly environs of Mother Macs and Katie Daly’s public houses where, in quiet reflective moments, I raise a glass to his memory.”
I’ll drink to that.
Sláinte!
