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Rage Against The Machine

She was the new hope for Fine Gael after winning a seat in the last election. Three years on, Lucinda Creighton is feeling disillusioned – abused in public, embroiled in a legal row over her comments, and stifled by the political system. So just how fed up is she?

Words: Una Mullally Portrait: Mark Condren

Creighton with Enda Kenny: she backed Richard Bruton in the leadership heave

Creighton with her parents after she won her seat in 2007

Vote-catching beermats from that election

Being ambushed by the media (aka TV3's Ursula Halligan) at the recent Fine Gael think-in in Co Waterford

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Lucinda Creighton is hungry. We meet on Tuesday afternoon. She confirms the interview at 20 past midnight the previous night, after her appearance on Tonight with Vincent Browne. Suffice to say she probably didn't get to bed that early. Still, before 8am she was already out in RTé for Morning Ireland. After that, she went for a 15-mile run, part of her training for her first marathon. Then she went to work in Leinster House.

If this interview hadn't been happening, she would have been on her way to DCU by the time we sat down in the Cellar Bar in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, to register for an MA in international relations which she deferred from last year. She orders sparkling water and some seafood – smoked salmon, oysters – and brown bread. She eats so slowly that the waiter approaches her three times over an hour to see if she's finished, to which she says 'no', each time with increasing embarrassment.

"It just becomes so crazy. You just get caught up in it. You're like a hamster in a wheel. That's the way I feel when the Dáil is in session," she begins on the eve of the Dáil returning.

We talk for over an hour. The conversation is dominated by Creighton's frustrations with the political system and even with Fine Gael. At one point she states, rather remarkably, that she has yet to decide whether to run in the next general election, a doubt that presumably many of her parliamentary party colleagues are unaware of considering she is one of their most high-profile TDs. She admits to being deflated, stressed and frustrated, but to also possessing a fighting spirit.

All of this takes place in quite a heady political context. In June, Creighton was on what turned out to be the wrong side of a heave against leader Enda Kenny. On Monday, Fine Gael drove another proverbial cement truck through the concept of well-thought-out PR by removing pairing arrangements, almost preventing Tánaiste and minister for education Mary Coughlan from travelling to a trade and education mission in the US, and allowing the Labour Party to capitalise on the main opposition party's error of judgement. Creighton is also being sued by developer Michael O'Flynn for defamation over comments she made in a speech at the MacGill Summer School criticising the party leadership for accepting donations from people whose loans had been transferred to Nama. She is defending the case, and says she can't talk about it.

She published a blog post on Monday criticising political point-scoring, which seemed to be a direct dig at how Fine Gael handled the Mary Coughlan pairing situation, "except for the fact that I began writing it on Sunday night, so I didn't even know about it at that stage", she explains. "But I can see why you'd see it that way." Would she have made the same decision that the party made, "the decision to refuse the pair?" She pauses and takes a deep breath. "Em, I actually don't even know who made the decision about it. I would have certainly gone to the government whip or even perhaps to Mary Coughlan's department and said this is unacceptable; she herself nominated Wednesday as the day to take education questions, which only come up every three or for weeks, you know? Rectify it. The government should have apologised to the opposition TDs who were preparing, and to the House. But then, ultimately, I think we would have had to grant the pair, because you know, I think it's important that she attend the trade fair."

It does seem from outside as if Fine Gael made a reactionary decision and, on top of that, Labour made a tactical decision. "Yeah. I suppose the thinking behind our stance on the pairing thing was probably intended to be tactical, but I don't think it was particularly well thought-out." Is that a problem in general? "I would have been critical of our handling of some PR issues in the past. I just think maybe if we had broader consultation amongst our parliamentary party about some of these issues, they could be foreseen and they could be avoided. But, I don't know, that's not my call to make. I suppose we were making the point but we maybe didn't communicate very well. It ended up being a bit of a PR mess."

It's the first time she criticises the PR workings of the party during the interview, but not the last. Does she think certain things aren't being thought out, "Not always, no." Why is that? Consultancy? Advice? PR? "Probably decisions just not necessarily taken with adequate consultation with members of the parliamentary party. Because, you know, I suppose we have paid staff in Leinster House and in party headquarters and they're very good people, and very hard-working and very committed, but they're not out knocking on doors, and they're not necessarily always going to be completely in tune or in touch with public sentiment – what people think, what people want, people's concerns. That's what we deal with every day because we hold clinics, we knock on doors. But yet, you often find that they're the ones who make the decisions. And I have a problem with that, and I've always had a problem with that."

It would be easy to ascribe much of Mayo-born Creighton's frustration (she calls the political system "ridiculous" and "archaic", saying "it reflects a different era") to her newness, but her career in politics has been longer than one would think. She started as a volunteer in Fine Gael when she was 18. In 2003, she qualified as an attorney at law in New York. Two years later, she was called to the Irish bar. Two years after that she emerged from the council to be elected as a TD in Dublin South East at 27 years old. But now, although passionate about politics and enthusiastic about changing the system, the language she uses makes you think she's near enough to the end of her tether.

"The lifestyle is so ludicrous," she says, complaining that TDs have to act like county councillors to get elected, fixing potholes and attending funerals. She says the profession is particularly unappealing to women, pointing out that, so far, three female TDs have announced they won't be standing in the next election.

"You have to work from 7am until 11 at night. I'm not whingeing about it, I'm just saying it's totally off-putting to any sane person – not just women, any normal person who values their personal time, who values their family time, who feels that they want a balanced lifestyle. It's not a balanced lifestyle, and it can't be under the current system. To change the lifestyle and the demands you have to change the system. And there has been no serious attempt by any politicians to seriously change that system. They know it. They're elected by it. So what interest do they have in changing it?"

At least her fiancé understands. He's Fine Gael senator Paul Bradford. His attitude balances hers, she says. "I would get very tense and worked up about work scenarios, whereas Paul is universally recognised around Leinster House as being very laid-back. He's a good influence on me that way," she smiles. "He calms me down."

Soon after that, following a chat about why she doesn't call herself a feminist because she doesn't want to be branded, and how she finds "objectionable" the public vitriol that comes from messages to radio stations when someone like Ivana Bacik, "a really bright, articulate woman who has a lot to say", speaks in favour of gender quotas – although Creighton herself isn't in favour of them – she drops the bombshell about the next election.

"I haven't even decided if I'm standing in the next election. It just hasn't arisen yet. I haven't had a selection convention. I don't know. I don't know when the election is going to be." Would she consider not standing? "I'll always consider all options. I'll make the decision when the Fine Gael national executive makes its decision about when they want to select candidates and things like that. Then I'll make my decision. I just won't make it before that because I don't want to spend my time in the Dáil now thinking about the next election."

How likely would it be that she wouldn't stand? "I've no idea. Genuinely. I haven't [made a decision]. It's a really demanding, really tough job. You make a huge number of sacrifices to do it. You're also very honoured to do it, but you make a lot of sacrifices and I'm very conscious of that. You have to weigh all of that up and I would feel that I've a lot of reflecting to do before I would stand in another election."

Some of those sacrifices and stresses include facing the wrath of the public during her private time. "I've been attacked in restaurants and things like that." It's an experience she describes as "not pleasant" and says that people become irrational sometimes when they disagree with you. "Also if you're in a pub and people have a lot of drink on them, people behave in a way that they mightn't otherwise. That's happened as well, people chewing your ear off disagreeing with you about something and you're there thinking 'I'm here with my friends, I don't want to engage'. I really don't mind people coming up to me and asking me about something. I don't have any problem with that. I don't really like being lectured at one o'clock in the morning..."

Does she think that people feel better able to approach and intimidate her because she's a woman? "Probably. I think women in politics generate far more invective than their male colleagues anyway."

Her fiancé lives in Cork, but is in Dublin three or four days a week. She's getting a puppy this week, which might help keep her company the rest of the time. "Sometimes I suppose Leinster House is a lonely place," she says, making the point that the feeling is shared by plenty of TDs, especially new ones. "You find that despite the fact that there's 166 TDs, everybody's working on their own. You're very much sort of a sole trader."

But she has her friends too, "My good friends would be a lot of the senators: Nicky McFadden, Paschal [Donohue] who I was on the council with, John Paul Phelan I'm very friendly with, the likes of Damien English. Leo [Varadkar] and I have been friends since we were in college, people like that; Simon Coveney I'd be friendly with. A broad mix from different parts of the country. I suppose mainly the younger TDs and younger senators hang out together."

With all the stress, it must be hard to relax. She'd like to go horse riding more often. She started when she was three or four, but now only occasionally gets the chance to head to Wicklow or Kildare to saddle up. Apart from that, she likes hiking and cooking. She doesn't go out much. She used to go to Reynards but now, if she's going for a drink, she goes to lower-key places – Kehoe's off Grafton Street, or Hogan's on George's Street.

"I've had moments where I've just felt like throwing in the towel and going, you know what, this is just too much, too much pressure, too much ridicule," she says towards the end of the interview. "I've definitely had those moments, but I would never regret getting into it, playing the part that I've played in it." It's hard not to pick up that the last comment "played" is made in the past tense. But nevertheless, you get the feeling that Creighton's reign isn't over. She's just having a lot of difficulties with the system.

When she was doing an interview for another magazine once, the interviewer asked a political correspondent about her. "He [the correspondent] said, 'Ah, Lucinda's grand. She's grand. She's had a few of the edges knocked off her'," she laughs. She cites that comment as the greatest lesson politics has taught her: "It is about knowing your station, maybe not getting ahead of yourself sometimes. You know, being humble enough to see your own weaknesses, to work with others; never, ever, ever dismiss anybody."

Has she got any of those edges left? "Oh God, I don't know! If you asked my colleagues, they'd tell you. I probably do, but I would say, on the down side, I've lost a lot of confidence." Why should you let it get to you? "Because you're human. It's not always possible, you can't always have a tough veneer. Sometimes if you're struggling day in day out it can grind you down a bit... I would make a general statement now which probably I'll be criticised for, but I do think that women are much more sensitive than men. I see it with my female colleagues. They take it much more personally. In some ways that's good, because I think they have much more empathy a lot of the time, and they take issues a lot more seriously and they're more focused on policies and the bigger issues. But the flipside of that is they're more exposed and more sensitive to things that roll off the backs of men. It's a more difficult working environment for women than it is for some of the men sometimes because it is an environment dictated by the men's rules rather than the women's. But we have to fight on."