Ivan Yates

So I was interested.

I'd been in St.

Columbus and I was interested in public speaking.

And I genuinely, when I was working on the farm at that stage, I'd listen to Question Time interviews.

in the afternoons from Westminster with Maggie Thatcher and Jim Callaghan and all that.

And I had a fascination about politics, had very strong views about the way the world needed to develop in terms of that I wasn't a socialist, I wasn't a Republican.

And so I was very committed, but I had no real game plan.

And just the balls fell for me, got onto the urban council, and then within three years I was in the Dáil.

or two years, actually, in the Dáil, because I was just in the right place at the right time.

Wexford went from four to five seats.

Fine Gael were, you know, this was Gareth Fitzgerald in 81.

They won 20 extra seats after the kind of Jack Lynch and 77 disaster and all that kind of thing.

So I was just really lucky.

And what would your dad have said?

Well, put it like this.

He didn't have any say in it, but he put it like this.

Like everything, if you do something and it's a success, everyone says, oh, that's a good idea.

Like if it's a disaster, you know what I mean?

You know, what do they say?

That failure is an orphan and success has many parents.