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David Cullinane TD wants to be health minister in the next government. Following his six-month national tour of the island’s hospitals, the Sinn Féin frontbencher sits down with Ciarán Galway to outline his alternative vision for healthcare. In 2016, after failing to secure a seat in three successive elections in Waterford, David Cullinane became the constituency’s first Sinn Féin TD in over 90 years. In 2020, he topped the poll with a record-breaking number of first preference votes. Attributing the development of his “leftleaning” republicanism to conversations with his grandparents on his mother’s side, who were “staunchly Fianna Fáil and staunchly republican”, alongside his experiences growing up in a working-class estate in Waterford, he felt Sinn Féin was the “perfect fit” for his own politics. To Cullinane, Irish republicanism “is not just about a united Ireland; it is also about a socially just Ireland”.
Persistence When he joined Sinn Féin, it was a small political party with no elected representatives in Waterford. Though, initially, he had not considered standing for election, the opportunity presented itself in 2002, a general election which he describes as “a baptism of fire”.
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For Cullinane, it marked the beginning of a protracted march upon the Dáil. “Election after election, standing to build and increase the vote, knowing in your heart that in most of these elections it was always going to be difficult to actually win a Dáil seat, but you have to put in the hard graft and keep building,” he recounts. Ultimately, the perseverance of the Sinn Féin grassroots in Waterford paid off. This was exemplified in the 2019 local elections when it was of the few constituencies in which party held onto all its council seats in what was an otherwise disastrous election. Breakthrough came in February 2020, when it secured nearly 39 per cent of the first preference vote. “That shows the phenomenal growth that Waterford made. We can now see that outside of Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, Louth, and one or two other constituencies in Dublin, Waterford is a really strong constituency for Sinn Féin,” Cullinane says, adding: “That is down to persistence, hard work, party building,
Credit: Sinn Féin
David Cullinane TD: ‘Serious changes in healthcare’
building credible politics, and building both Sinn Féin and my own credibility on key issues in Waterford as well. It certainly was a long and sometimes difficult journey, but when you see the results of the last election, one that was worth it.”
Frontbench As expected, following the 2020 general election, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald TD undertook a rotation of her parliamentary party frontbench. In a surprise move, however, Cullinane replaced Louise O’Reilly TD as spokesperson on health. Crediting O’Reilly for her developing Sinn Féin’s policy platform in the health remit, he remarks: “I always had an interest in health, and locally, health was always the issue that I understood best. I had a grá for it. When I listened to other political parties, over a long number of years, talk about health as a ‘poisoned chalice’ or as the ministry that you do not want, that it was the one that I did want. If you make positive changes in healthcare, it has such
