Waterford TD Conor McGuinness on a gruelling first six months in the Dáil
Conor McGuinness chatted to the Waterford News & Star about his first six months in Dáil Éireann.
Six months is a long time in politics. For Waterford TD Conor McGuinness, his time since being elected TD has been marked with highs (campaign for children's educational equality) and lows (impasse on Waterford Airport, lack of funding for the N25).
On Tuesday, June 3, the Sinn Féin TD came to the Waterford News & Star office to sit down and talk about what has been a hectic year so far.
Earlier this year, Deputy McGuinness made his maiden speech in the Dáil highlighting the lack of adequate school spaces for children, both in Waterford and the rest of the country.
He highlighted the dire situation facing St John's Special School in Dungarvan, how up to 20 families were caught in the very difficult situation of not being able to find a place for their children.
While the situation for the parents is by no means fully resolved, bringing attention to this discrepancy was of significant importance to the Deputy.
He said: "The single biggest campaign that I worked on in those six months has been around Special Education. It's been hugely important, spanning city and county, all sorts of families. Children who couldn't get access to the appropriate educational placements."
For children in Waterford, this issue manifested in a lack of access to special education or supports within mainstream schooling.
Parents protested at the Dáil, Waterford City and Dungarvan to call on the Government to deliver appropriate education for their children.
Deputy McGuinness commented: "To my mind, that we're in 2025 and parents are still expected to fight, to go on the national airways, to protest and camp outside the Dáil to get an appropriate educational placement for their child is just totally wrong."
Minister for Education Helen McEntee has met with parents from Waterford and beyond, and while big promises have been made, there is still a way to go.
Deputy McGuinness said: "Some of the families have been told now that there is a place for them. Others are still waiting. It remains to be seen if those places will materialize come September. It is a huge undertaking in terms of both the modular unit to facilitate and accommodate the classes, but also in terms of recruiting personnel and to teach them."
For McGuinness, this was a problem that he believes was left on the wayside by the Government.
"It didn't happen all of a sudden. We knew going back years that there were pinch points and bottlenecks in terms of special education provision."
In May 2025, Deputy McGuinness was appointed Chair of the Oireachtas Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Committee. He was also appointed by Sinn Féin as their Spokesperson on Rural Affairs, Community Development and Gaeltacht. Both roles, he feels, are deeply informed by his own background growing up and living on the Waterford coast.
"The fact that I represent a city and county with a huge rural hinterland, many rural communities and the fact that I am living in the Gaeltacht and raising a family with Irish.
"There's a lot of work to be done in those spaces, community development has not recovered since the austerity years. Funding is still cut. Community and voluntary sector workers still do not have paid parity with their colleagues in the public service."
A contentious topic across the Déise is the proposal to set up off-shore wind farming.
While people are supportive of finding alternatives for sustainable energy, doubts remain over the impacts of installing windfarms so close to the Waterford coastline. Deputy McGuinness said: "There is a concern that setting these 12km offshore will be colossal and will have a very negative impact on livelihoods, on tourism, for example, but also on cetaceans and other aquatic wildlife in our littoral waters and along the coastline. There's real concern about that, and people want to be heard."
He continued: "They also want to make sure that we don't fall victim to an extractive model of energy generation that has happened to areas all across the world, where large corporations go into an area, take the assets, in this case, the wind, and leave very little behind them in terms of an economic dividend, or a social dividend."
In terms of economics, a regular refrain in Waterford is that we are systematically underfunded and underestimated in terms of capital spending. Recently came the disappointing news that major road projects on the N25 and N24 will not be receiving funding. On this point, Deputy McGuinness said: "There is a huge need to develop the N72, the R672 which links Dungarvan and Clonmel, and the N24.
"The N25 is the backbone of Waterford's roads infrastructure. It is the spine that runs west to east through the county of Waterford. It was been widely acknowledged as Ireland's most dangerous stretch of national road."
On the failure to fund the N25, he said: "It's a two-fingered salute to the people of Waterford, that's the way I see it."
Lack of Government support on Waterford Airport is another source of great frustration for the TD.
He said: "We've come to a point where we just want a decision. If the Government is not willing to do this, at least have the decency to level with the people of Waterford and Kilkenny and Wexford, who are also invested in this. Because those three local authorities have put their money on the table. Private investors have put their money on the table. The missing part is government, and they just need to invest.
"But if they're not going to invest, if it's never going to happen, at least have the honesty to tell us that it's not going to happen."
Deputy McGuinness has spoken in the past about the need for a Jigsaw Youth Service here in Waterford. He notes with some irony that fellow Waterford TD Mary Butler is the Minister of State at the Department of Health, with special responsibility for Mental Health.
He said: "I just find that inexplicable[...] when there's a glaring absence of a service in this whole part of the island and when CAMHS is constantly in crisis because of recruitment and retention."
The continual lack of support for Waterford is a gnawing pain for all across the board. Deputy McGuinness noted that while the Déise has an educated workforce and opportunities for growth, there is a constant "neglect".
"We just see a time and time again where Waterford is left behind. I don't know how many things I could list off that 'Waterford is the only city that doesn't have X'. I mean, it's a constant refrain, because there has been sustained neglect of Waterford."
He pressed on the need for critical, sustained development, in both rural and urban communities.
He said: "We mentioned transport infrastructure, both road and air. But we need housing. There needs to be a huge uptick in delivery of social and affordable housing and also private housing so that people can come here to study, to work, to live, to raise kids and to give us that critical mass, both in terms of the population and economic activity to drive the city."
The conversation with Deputy McGuinness came shortly after the Dáil voted down a bill that would restrict the Central Bank from overseeing Israeli war bonds. (At the time of writing, over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed over the last 19 months due to Israeli military action).
Deputy McGuinness and Deputy David Cullinane voted in favour of the bill, while their fellow Waterford representatives, Ministers of State Mary Butler and John Cummins voted against it.
Waterford has very strong ties to Palestine, with the city twinned with the municipal capital of Ramallah.
On Deputies Butler and Cummins' decision to vote against the bill, Deputy McGuinness said: "I am disappointed. For me, it's not just politics. This comes to the core of why I'm involved in politics.
"We have to stand firm against genocide. We need to take a stand as a people. The Irish people are, I would say, resolute in their stance on this. They support Palestine."
He stated that Ireland has to show strength and leadership by taking action against the state of Israel. He said: "We still have a situation where the genocide is being armed by shipments passing over our airspace, where the genocide is still being funded by the sale of Israeli, they call them, war bonds.
"They're genocide bonds. They're bonds that fund the killing of children."
