Galway’s newest TD takes to the big stage like a duck to water
He gets up at four o’clock in the morning and cranks up his digger and then gets to work as an agricultural contractor; in North Galway and Roscommon he is considered one of the best.
Several hours later he returns home, heads for the shower, dons the suit, has a bit of breakfast – and then Mick Fitzmaurice heads for Dail Eireann because that is where the public want him to be.
The straight-talking Glinsk man and turf cutting campaigner has become the darling of the national media and they simply cannot get enough of him.
It is simply to do with the fact that he speaks clearly and simply and yet what he says resonates with nearly everyone in rural Ireland.
Mick Fitzmaurice is the sort of many who would much prefer to get down from the digger, head straight to Leinster House, speak his piece on behalf of his constituents and get back to the daily routine.
Unfortunately for him, politics in Ireland does not operate that way and it is a time-consuming career and there are often days in which he spends 20 hours doing both jobs.
He has a young family and, as he says himself, a wonderful and understanding wife.
Early last year the public got their first real taste of what Fitzmaurice was about. He declared his intention to run as an independent candidate for Galway County Council mainly on the basis of protecting the rural fabric of the county.
The closure of Garda stations, post offices, banks and various other services infuriated him. He wanted to have some influence in trying to ‘stop the rot’.
He had a huge team behind him and canvassed the Tuam Electoral Area intensely.
He received the third highest first preference and was elected on the first count having exceeded the quota by almost 800 votes.
His supporters were delirious but Fitzmaurice was more restrained and immediately afterwards spoke to the local media about his concern for rural Ireland and how services were being eroded.
At the same weekend Ming Flanagan from Castlerea was elected to the European Parliament and this prompted a bye-election in the old Roscommon-South Leitrim constituency. Fitzmaurice decided this was an opportunity to bring his views and concerns to a national stage.
He could not even vote for himself as he put his name forward and mounted a similar intense campaign.
But he captured the imagination of the mainly rural voter in this constituency.
He may not have topped the poll but he received a major first preference and it became apparent from an early stage that he was to receive an unprecedented transfer from the many independents in the field. They even loved him in Leitrim.
A year on in the Dail, his focus has not changed. He wants rural communities to be reinvigorated. He wants life brought back to villages that are suffering. He wants the elderly to feel safe in their own homes.
“First of all I want to consolidate what we have in rural Ireland and then I want to take what we have closed and use them to our benefit,” he told The Connacht Tribune.
He added: “We cannot stop banks from moving out of towns and villages but at least we can encourage credit unions to replace them and provide a more extensive range of services”.
Fitzmaurice would love for his Independent Alliance to be part of the next Government.
“If I cannot implement change for the benefit of rural communities, then what is the point of me being there”.
He hopes that they can win ten or twelve seats and then maybe they could prop up a Fine Gael/Labour coalition.
But it is abundantly clear he is not there for the money and just has rural Ireland at heart.
Now he will be standing in the new Roscommon-Galway constituency where he can actually vote for himself – and at the moment he is the only Galway candidate standing in this part of the constituency which has 20,000 potential votes.