SINN Féin councillor Sharon Benson is a single, working mother who knows all about the challenges facing the people she helps everyday over the course of her council duties.
Juggling family and work commitments, as well as a local election to campaign, free time is not something the City North representative has in abundance. But Sharon recently took time out of her hectic schedule to chat with the Limerick Post at the Greenhills Hotel, a stone’s throw from her home in Caherdavin.
Greeting me with a warm smile and nervous laughter, unsure what she is letting herself in for, we quickly turn the talk to the upcoming local elections to break the ice.
“With Sinn Féin as a party, we are always out. We’re just doing a bit more knocking than in recent times. We’re trying to cover as much ground as we can at the moment.”
On the doorsteps
Sharon says there is “momentum there” on the ground in Limerick for what she brings to the council table.
“There is a lot of support for Sinn Féin, but at the same time you can never take anything for granted. Politics is a strange thing. At the moment our focus is just keeping the heads down and get the work done and talking to people.”
Of course, it’s no big surprise that housing is still the big issue Cllr Benson is hearing about on the doorsteps during the election trail, but there are also other important challenges people are facing, she says.
“Housing, the hospital, public services are all on their knees – the lack of mental health support is a thing that’s coming up a lot and the lack of certain services and support for children with disabilities. That is a big thing at the moment,” she says.
“Families are banging their heads against the wall to get their child’s needs looked after and that’s having a disastrous impact. All these things are coming together and people are angry.
“We have had the same thing over and over and over. I mean, what’s the definition of madness,” Cllr Benson points out with a wry giggle.
As the conversation starts to flow, Sharon’s jitters disappear with it and she relaxes into our conversation. Finding her feet, and her vigour with it, she tells me that she is hopeful that this change will come, and that she and her party can be part of that.
“We’ve got good policies there and we just need to given the chance to do it. When I started in Maurice’s office (Limerick TD Maurice Quinilvan) in 2015 the housing crisis had hit. People were becoming homeless. Emergency accommodation was needed. It never got better. The truth of the matter is, the government didn’t do anything tangible about the housing crisis and now what we see out there is the result of that.
“The policy at the moment is to keep house prices high. The policy, when rent started to rise that time, was to let them go high. You are sticking a band aid on issues and that just doesn’t work. They are all landlords and that’s exactly why they are doing it.”
The squeezed middle
Regarding the housing market, Sharon says that “there’s an agenda underneath it all, and an over-reliance on the private rental market as well. The government always has an over-reliance on the private everything and anything.”
Sharon says her thoughts go out to the so-called ‘squeezed middle’, who she says are “completely priced out” of the housing market.
“They can’t afford to rent. They can’t afford to get a mortgage, and there’s absolutely zero options for that squeezed middle.”
Looking to be re-elected for a second term as a Sinn Féin councillor for Limerick City North, Sharon confesses that it feels harder to put yourself out there the second time round.
“People think it is hard to put yourself out there the first time. It’s not. The second time is a bit more nerve-racking,” she shares.
“The first year or two as a councillor is daunting. It does take that long to get your feet under the table. The pace of it though, is something that takes getting used to.”
‘Why not me?’
Sharon tells me she started volunteering in Maurice Quinlivan’s Denmark Street office in 2015. Back then, she was purely focused on getting some work experience and didn’t see this political juncture in her path coming.
“I volunteered in Maurice’s office to get office experience and I absolutely loved it. That was 2015, nine years ago now. I didn’t have any political ambition initially. I suppose I would have looked as politics as being something for someone else. That’s not for me, that’s not for people like me. But then once I started working in Maurice’s office I realised these issues that people were coming with each day, these are all issues I faced myself. I’ve been there, done that, why not me to represent people?
“You have to experience things, you have to be in touch with reality, you have to be on the ground and living through these things to understand where people are coming from.
Regarding a growing feeling of unrest on the ground at the moment, Sharon says that her experience as a councillor seeing the day-to-day issues of people in Limerick means she can “completely understand the anger and frustration of people”.
“It’s not a single issue. It’s an accumulation of a lot of issues — the lack of Gardaí, the lack of health care services, everything, there’s just a huge frustration out there at the moment. All these things are coming to a head now.”
As a working single mother of a 16-year-old son, Sharon says it can be challenging to juggle the work-family balance. She praises her parents, and grandparents everywhere, as the “unsung heroes of society”.
“I know the issues and challenges single parents are faced with, I am living it. It resonates with me when people are coming in with their issues and I can 100 per cent get it.
“I am beyond childcare but I wouldn’t have been able to have been working if it wasn’t for the help of my parents, and I love that bond between grandparents and grandchildren.”
Moving towards better mobility supports
Sharon lives with a condition called ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that, over time, can cause some of the vertabrae in the spine to fuse. Her condition, she tells me, is part of the reason she began volunteering with Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan almost a decade ago.
Experiencing the onset at 19 years old, Sharon says that, through her own experience of dealing with chronic inflammation in her joints, spine, and pelvis, it has given her an understanding of the challenges facing people with mobility issues.
“It took me 11 years to get the diagnosis. Basically it is just chronic inflammation. I am doing good now, but when I was from the ages of 19 to 27, even to 30, I was in absolute agony.
“I think I have gone into remission with it the last couple of years but it is about finding a balance in activity as well. You overdo it and you are going to be sore. Then you can under do it as well and you are going to be sore, so it is about learning to get to know your own body.
“The main thing is, it is a mobility issue. That’s why I have been really strong on grants and stuff for people with mobility issues, because sometimes they can be the things that people will take for granted.
“I understand that a slight change, little things that people would take for granted, can make a significant negative impact on your life. I would be a strong advocate for people with disability and mobility issues because I get it. But we need to do more.”
The woman in the Dáil
Before I let her go, I ask Sharon about the strong female presence in Sinn Féin at the moment and whether she thinks this is something that stands in their favour going into election season.
“We have a lot of strong female candidates – Joanne Collins, Ursula Gavan, Frances Lonergan, and Danielle O’Shea, they are all fantastic – and we have a lot of good female members coming up through the party now. I think it is very important that we have that, but it is not out of the ordinary for Sinn Féin. We’ve always been one of those parties that have attracted women candidates through the years.”
“Mary Lou McDonald is absolutely brilliant,” says Sharon, talking about her party’s leader, who took over the reigns from Gerry Adams in 2018.
“She’s so down to earth, she’s just a normal person, but she is so formidable inside in the Dáil. She takes no crap. She is definitely attracting more women to the party. But I think she does something very special as well, and that is she makes politics for everyone.”
It would appear that Sharon takes great inspiration from McDonald and the accessible figure she cuts in the public eye.
“Like I said to you before, I wouldn’t have seen politics as being for me, I’d seen a certain type of person in politics, but thought that’s not for people like me. We need more normal people, and she makes it for everyone.
“I think there has been a huge shift in Irish politics because of people like Mary Lou. Her language just makes it for everyone. We don’t realise but politics is in everything you do — in the community, in the school setting, it’s everywhere. I would like to think that Mary Lou is making the change that we are now seeing in politics, not just for Sinn Féin members, but across the board that people are standing up saying I can do this, this is for me.”
