No bleeding heart liberal

Róisín Shorthall is anti-abortion, thinks curfews should be imposed on young people and has said the social welfare system encourages some young women to have babies by rewarding them financially. Yet she is seen as one of the strongest female left-wing voices in the Dáil.

So is Róisín Shorthall, as some Labour colleagues have classified her, a right-wing politician, or simply a realist? She says her agenda is driven by "real-life issues" and, working in a mainly working-class urban constituency, she sees plenty of evidence of what is affecting people's everyday lives.

Issues such as anti-social behaviour, underage drinking and drug abuse are what concern Shortall. She is certainly no bleeding-heart liberal and takes a tough line on all these issues.

"Juvenile justice has been neglected for years and we are paying for that now with problems of drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Gardaí need to have a greater presence and community policing is where it's at."

But she says if young people are "left to their own devices", it makes it harder for gardaí to deal with anti-social behaviour, and there is a need to restore responsibility on the part of parents: "There is a growing number of parents who do not have the capacity to raise children, and are not in a position to provide adequate care, and then there are some parents who just don't give a damn."

She says there is a role for the proposed Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), but thinks what they aim to achieve could be done under existing legislation. She says it would be more effective if the Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, brought in articles of the Children's Act 2001 instead: "The Act has provisions for curfews and parental orders, which means that if a child ends up in court, its parents should have to foot some of the blame, and give an undertaking that they will exercise more control and, for example, take up parenting courses."

The biggest clash in her political life was with Proinsias de Rossa, which became one of the biggest obstacles to Labour's merger with Democratic Left(DL) in 1998. She shared the same constituency with the then DL leader and as it had just become a three-seater, two of which could not be filled by Labour, she realised that one of them had to lose.

But it was not going to be her. "In the end it was agreed that the best option would be for him to stand for European elections." She effectively pushed him out of standing in the General Election but does not think he holds it against her: "I've always had pretty good relations with him, and there has been no animosity between us over the years."

She says her apprehensions about the merger with Democratic Left were not entirely for reasons of personal political survival. She warned at the time that the merger would create a space on the left for the growth of Sinn Féin.

Not only did this prediction come true, but it is now a fact that haunts her political survival. In the end, it was not Proinsias de Rossa who became her biggest political threat, but Sinn Féin's Dessie Ellis. He got more first preferences than her in the last election: she got in ahead of him on transfers. "Dessie Ellis has a considerable vote," she admits. Holding him off next time will be a challenge.

Shortall thinks the pre-election pact with Fine Gael will not make any difference to her seat, but says she has "huge support" for it. Although she grew up in a staunch Fianna Fáil family, this support seems to be borne out of an "anything but Fianna Fáil" attitude rather than a desire to be in government with Fine Gael: "There is a danger that we are going to have a permanent Fianna Fáil government which is not in the interest of democracy. In the last election there was no alternative. Now there is and there is no ambiguity of what people are voting for."

Shortall admits that she has her eye on a ministerial position if this pact succeeds: "You get a bit fed up raising issues all the time. Anyone serious about politics would like to serve as a minister at some point. I would be very interested in the Transport and Education portfolios." And, as one of the more conservative members of Labour, Fine Gael might be willing to have her in the Cabinet.

Mary Regan