John Downing

speaker

506 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 10 Sep

John Downing’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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Through all of that, he was also a very serious and accomplished rugby player with UCD, with Wanderers, that South County Dublin club.

He played for Cambridge.

He played senior for Leinster, which is quite something, actually just very close to the Ireland international rugby 15 in a sense.

He played under 20 for Ireland.

So very accomplished on the sports field and very accomplished academically.

Where does the politics come in?

Well, he was around Fianna Fáil.

relatively early on.

He actually acted for Bertie Ahern in a libel trial way back in 2000 as quite a young barrister and later was a backroom advisor to Fiona Foyle.

He struggled hard.

I have vivid personal memories of him

canvassing in the early morning on the canal bridges in various attempts, struggling attempts to get a start in elected politics.

He lost in what was then Dublin's South East in 2007.

He won a seat against the odds in the local elections in 2009.

That, remember, was after the recession had hit.

Fianna Fáil's name was mud.

They were in coalition with the Greens.

The 2009 locals presaged a complete meltdown in the 2011 national elections.

So he won a seat, a Dublin City Council seat against the odds, became the only councillor south of the Liffey for Fianna Fáil at that stage.

But yet again, he lost, of course, in 2011.

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