The Blindboy Podcast - Senator Lynn Ruane

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

I chat with Lynn Ruane who is an independent Irish senator and author of "People like me". As a Senator she has been a powerful voice in advocating for harm reduction and health based drugs legislation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yart, hello and welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener to this podcast, I recommend going back to some earlier episodes, maybe even beginning at the start, okay? That's just a general thing we do. This podcast isn't sequential, but if you're new, definitely go back to the start or an earlier episode to get a feel for what it's about for current listeners you glamorous hooligans i have a little public service announcement um just recommending if you're living in the 26 counties of ireland Ireland the Republic of Ireland download the HSE

coronavirus tracing app ok it's a bit of a shame that it's not available in the north of Ireland doesn't make sense to me I know technically the north of Ireland is under legislation of the

British Crown but it's one island, we should really, everyone on the island should have access to the fucking HSE app, because coronavirus doesn't give a shit about the Good Friday Agreement, or the six counties, but anyway, the HSE coronavirus tracing app okay because I'll tell you why if you've been listening to the podcast you know I'm speaking a lot about how we all need to move towards a collectivist mindset if we're to beat coronavirus we can't be thinking about ourselves we have to think what can i do to protect other people and then someone else is thinking that way about you it's a cooperative thing you're worrying about someone else and someone else is worrying about you and together

if we do that then you can be coronavirus number one wearing the masks wear a cotton face mask when you're in public if you're not wearing yours and someone else is wearing theirs it's not effective you both have to be wearing a cotton face covering whatever that is but the coronavirus tracing app download it onto your phone right update your ios and it kind of limits it limits iphone users who have older iphones which is unfortunate fortunate but if you have a newer iphone or a newer android update your software download the app turn on contact tracing what it basically does is if everyone in the country has got the coronavirus app on their phone and it's turned on to tracing if you happen to encounter another person who is confirmed coronavirus you'll get a notification on your phone that you have been in contact a close contact with a person who has the disease okay that's what this app can do

you're you can put in if you're feeling unwell you type it into the app you type in your location and it provides the hse with this really detailed database based on technology we carry our phones around with us at all times our data is continuously being monitored okay here's a way that that can be used for not just selling us goods but to keep us healthy and safe there most likely is going to be a second wave of coronavirus right now it's july come flu season we're going to get a second wave we know we're going to get a second wave we're trying to prepare for it it becomes really easy if everyone's got a contact tracing app that means

you could be living in Sligo there's very very few coronavirus cases in Sligo but let's just say it's October you're in Sligo you come in contact you go to Dublin you come in contact with a confirmed coronavirus case

you go back to Sligo your phone beeps and says you spent a half an hour in the company of a person with coronavirus you must self isolate your phone tells you you stay in your gaff for two weeks

and now you have stopped infecting the entirety of Sligo with coronavirus that's how this works You stay in your gaff for two weeks. And now you have stopped. Infecting the entirety of Sligo. With coronavirus. That's how this works. So I do recommend that. Download the app. I don't know what it's called.

It's the official HSE coronavirus tracing app. It's all over the news. But I just want to tell you it's a good idea. Okay. I have it on my phone. If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever. You'll know that I've been having a whale of a time. With my live streaming. I'm live streaming.

About five days a week now on Twitch. Twitch.tv forward slash TheBlindByPodcast. And. What I'm mostly doing is playing a video game called Red Dead Redemption exploring Red Dead Redemption exploring the space but also

writing live music to the events that are happening in the game and it is who the fuck is texting me em I've been having an unbelievable crack happening in the game and it is who the fuck is texting me em I've been having an unbelievable crack unbelievable

it feels selfish I'm having so much fun it actually feels selfish to the point that I have to wonder is this even entertaining or is this just me having fun with people watching

I'm writing about nine songs a, I'm writing about, nine songs a week, I'm writing, so what it is, is like, writing music to a video game, using all my different instruments, but essentially using,

what's happening in the video game, as inspiration, to write the songs, which means, there's no way to have creative block, because there's a continual stream of stimulation that I respond to creatively and I'm writing about four songs a stream the hit rate is about 50% by which I mean if I write four or five songs a stream chances are two of them are good enough

that i would consider those demos that i would develop into something further because that's what i'm doing i'm trying to allow people to see what my creative process is when you're songwriting all you want is to get the really catchy chords a good bass line and a catchy melody with good phrasing of words, that's all you're looking for you're not necessarily looking for the best lyrics, you're looking for an idea the basic shape

of a song, a sketch of a song that you can then take away and develop into something better but you're fishing for ideas, you're fishing for those catchy melodies and yeah my hit rate seems to be about 50% which is pretty high

for in terms of my own songwriting process 50% is pretty high because I'm receiving continual visual stimulation from playing the video game and it's unbelievable fun it's so much crack twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast. Generally around half nine at night.

Is when I do it. In general. Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays. Thereabouts. But I leave the streams up anyway. So you can re-watch them. But it's. It's most crack.

When you're watching it live. Because you can interact with me. And you can chat with me. So this week I have for you a live podcast it's been so long i can't even remember the last time i did a live pod it feels i was listening back to this when i was putting it together for this episode it feels like an alternate reality. It's only been four months since I've done a live gig, but the idea of being up on stage with a room full of people, just, it feels like, it's not even that it feels like in the past. It feels like a different reality, like a dream world.

I'm listening back to the podcast and I'm having to go, wow, did I actually do that, you mean I was in a room and loads of people were sitting really close to each other and it was normal, so I've got a live podcast for you, I'm sitting on quite a few live podcasts that I can put out, to give a nice break because I haven't put a live podcast out in about five weeks, out in about five weeks this podcast is incredibly enjoyable it's an interview with senator lynn rohan and lynn is someone i greatly admire she is a really concise speaker what i admire most about lynn is she's congruent okay and i've said this about the guests on this podcast that i admire the most are the ones with congruency in that when lynn

speaks it's quite clear that what she feels and what she thinks is also what she says there's a clear line of honest congruence and that then translates as someone worth listening to when you hear someone speaking and you're like this person is i'm listening to what they're saying it's often because they're being congruent their emotional world is what is being spoken there and then without any barriers and that's engaging so lynn is a senator obviously she's a current senator yeah this podcast is from like six months ago so in the podcast we mentioned that she's looking for re-election she has since been re-elected as senator and is a sitting senator at the moment she speaks about addiction addiction and the

condition of society around addiction the legislation around addiction lynn herself has spent years working in the community um with people. Who are living with addiction. She's written a book. I know when you finish listening to this podcast. You'll want to buy her book. Her book is called. People Like Me. Lynn Ruan.

And it's just. A really engaging chat. A really engaging interesting chat. It was a pleasure for me to listen back to it. And often as well with live podcasts you know that sometimes I caught it at the end and sometimes I don't put out the audience questions this one I did put out the audience questions because her the chat she gave was so engaging to the audience that the questions at the end were just The chat she gave was so engaging to the audience that the questions at the end were just unbelievably on point. So I left the whole thing in.

So it's quite a long podcast, but it's one of those ones that's, it's long because it has to be. It's worth it, you know? So before I get into it, we'll do a little ocarina pause. Not an ocarina, I've got a shaker. Adverts. Adverts. Advertaker. Adverts. Adverts. Advertising. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

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I don't know what it was. All right. The Patreon. Right. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, this is a fully independent podcast, I am beholden to nobody, no one tells me what to talk about, no one tells me how long my podcast should be, no one tells me who I should or shouldn't have as a guest, this is a 100% independent podcast funded by you, the listener, right, every so often there's an advertiser but

i can tell him to fuck off they have to really they have to come to me and make the case as to why they should be able to advertise on my podcast rather than me chasing them and this is the model that's working and it's also it's my so this podcast is my sole source of income it's a lot of work and by becoming a patron of the podcast you're just supporting me for the work that I'm doing if you're listening to the podcast consider paying me for the work that I'm doing

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if you like it for what it is it's because it's independent also once a month i will pick one patron at random and this patron will receive a hand drawing i'm going to draw this person a picture and i'll send it to you in the post alright, that's just a little treat for the patrons so thank you very much for that, let's get into the live podcast with Senator Lin Ruan, I hope you enjoy it

I know you will yart, I'll catch you next week I might have a little hot take what I want to start off with with these things, always what I do is I ask Twitter for questions, right? And I'm going to start with this one because a man wrote it with no sense of irony whatsoever. Like he was dead serious. So the question was, does she kiss her kids with that mouth?

Thank you. question was does she kiss her kids with that mouth thank you and then a screen grab of a tweet that you'd sent which simply said ejection cunt and like firstly i was going like jesus christ man are're really going to be policing curses. But I felt it's quite an apt question to ask you because you're a senator, you're inside in the shanit. I say cunt a lot. Yeah! But a huge amount of shitty critique that is directed against you has nothing to do with the content of your words,

but it has to do with how you deliver it so your mouth is mink flanagan's jumper or the lack of mick wallace's jumper yeah um no so yeah so i i can't i'm trying so hard to remember what injection cunts rhymes with because i was actually being really clever with that tweet it's a bit odd like so they had today it was about a by-election candidate an extremely racist by-election candidate and when they keep coming at me now i've decided that i'm not going to give air time to debate so i just exactly fuck off fuck off but they had said something and i know that at the time injection cunts was a really really clever comeback but I can't remember what was a comeback to so I wish they had have actually given the

first part of that joke is it like an ejector seat but for cunts yeah basically but it doesn't really matter what I say in politics so my accent will garner a lot of interest I get men writing you know four page letters to me and correcting my grammar on radio stations on the telly telling me what way I should have grammatically said something how I should pronounce something and basically I know how I should speak and how I should speak is exactly how I'm speaking exactly and the majority of people in Dublin have a flat Dublin accent like me. I've no interest. I mean, Sister Bridget tried very, very

hard in sixth year to teach me how to say this, that, these and those. And I ignored her. So I'm definitely going to ignore every single misogynist, racist classist online that tries to tell me how to speak. Do you know what fucking pisses me off about it, Lynn, is the same people who'd be correcting your tell me how to speak Do you know what fucking pisses me off about it Lynn is the same people

who'd be correcting your grammar on how you speak are the same ones who probably think James Joyce is class and there is no you can only read James Joyce in your accent and if you don't read it in your accent you're wrong like there's Americans who are spending three years trying to

figure out what Ulysses is about and if you just simply read it to them they could just leave in a week but it's a fact it is like it's um but like even with james jice wasn't accepted for a long long time either like so people people have people want to try and own you and respect you when you've made it do you know what i mean and i feel like that's a little bit like that with me sometimes so like I mean every struggle that I've gone through through life whether it be through addiction whether it be through um you know just inequality in the education system a whole cohort of society are waiting there till you've made it and then they claim you and it's the same with James Joyce I mean people ridiculed him for a long time and didn't accept him and and how he wrote and how he wrote was you know it was very ridiculed by other people

that said that you know exactly like so you know for me it's like we when people want to claim you when you've made it you know but they weren't there when you fought the system. They weren't there when you tried to battle your way through an unfair community that was riddled with deprivation, with so many people, with so many potential. They weren't there. But there's this whole society that when somehow you have a platform, they all want to champion you. And it's kind of like, well, you don't really have a right to champion me. And they expect you to want to become's kind of like, well, you know, you don't really have a right to champion me, and they expect you to want to become them, instead of going, no, actually, I still want to

talk like me, I still want to live in Talley, and I still want to, you know, have all my friends flourish within their own communities, like, we don't want to escape where we're from, we just want to have the same access where we live you know but they it's it's like whether it's me James Joyce or anybody that is not like speaking the what they deem as as English language you know they they want to um they think you're going to progress to be one of them rather than you remain who you are um everyone in this room has a an idea of who you are right but the podcast is being recorded live and there's going to be some Greeks listening and can you tell us a bit about like you're from Tala what was it like growing up in Tala in the early 90s for yourself?

I wouldn't swap growing up where i grew up for anything in the world um i would obviously swap in terms of some of our experiences but growing up for me i grew up in a small little cul-de-sac in killin arden and i had a lovely childhood i had amazing parents i suppose i started experiencing the differences that exist geographically or demographically in communities when I hit my teenage years and I experienced a lot of my friends dying and like just yesterday it was my pal's anniversary Tracy and it was her my other pal's anniversary Bernie who died on the exact same day and then my other friend John died on Tracy's 21st birthday do you know what I mean so there's like where everyone was just dying um as I was growing up

and for me um whatever about the lack of resources in our community when young people are faced at such an early age with the idea that you might not live very long your relationship with risk changes so a lot of people die in communities where there's a high amount of deprivation and poverty due to risky behavior but that risky behavior is often completely um attached to the idea that you know i'm not going to live very long so why should I put all these barriers in place or all these, you know, why would I engage in education if all my friends are dying around me? So that would have been my experience.

Like I obviously had a much nicer experience as well, but I feel like it's those really powerful experiences of death and addiction and poverty that probably moulded me more than others yeah a working class experience is a broad spectrum I mean to be people that grew up my community that would be gone what the fuck is she talking about where was she living like and I'm only living on the road in front of them so sometimes you're but it was even like backstage like you were you were having a slag with Emmett you know and you grew very close to each other but you were saying he got his grass cut yeah they got their grass cut and raheen got their grass cut yeah and they got their paper delivered yeah yeah

so me and emma kind of slag each other off because i mean i literally have two minutes from where emma grew up and we played snooker in the same snooker hall growing up, and we've had mad experience of raids in that snooker hall and fucking raves and the lot, like, do you know? So our experiences are exactly the same. But when I looked from my house to his house, I was like, they're over there cutting the verges on your man's grass, like, do you know what I mean?

So even within some communities, within a very close-knit community, you have different experiences, you know what I mean? So even within some communities, within a very close-knit community, you have different experiences. Yeah. You know, and you get that even in terms of progression toward level education. Yeah.

Like people literally living, you know, on the opposite side of a fence to each other have very different experiences in life. And I mean, I think that just shows the stark level of inequality that exists in urban communities, especially. I mean, in urban communities especially i mean in rural

communities you have less of the private system yeah so you have poverty and you have isolation and you have inequality but people are being uh schooled together as well like so there's kind of less of an obvious divide sometimes between people which i think is a much better place to be in um you're a lot of the work you do inside in the shannon you speak out for addiction a lot and a huge amount of the questions that i got tonight were about uh addiction one of the questions was does a background in working with people because you did community work with addiction as well didn't you a lot look at me when they're at my fucking pint asking questions

the optics of this is very bad thank fuck i'm not a politician um does a background in working with people addicted to drugs alcohol etc help with working with people who are addicted to power um i think working with people that are aware of their addiction is much easier than working with people in power that don't realise they're fucking narcissists. Yeah, like... You must... Your day-to-day job must involve

dealing with an awful lot of pricks. Yeah. But does it, like... I mean mean I won't say pricks but people who are completely blinded to experiences beyond their own so I think one of the skills that I have which very much comes from my upbringing and my experience of community life as an addiction worker as a community worker is that um I'm good with people um I'm good with relationship building and I'm good with not judging people based on their experience in life.

And I think I try to apply that same method to working with people in politics. Because for me, as an independent senator, I don't have the power of a party that can just introduce legislation and pass it through and everyone's going to vote for it. I rely very much on the skills that I've built

as a working-class woman to be able to engage with people, to bring my lived experience, my political knowledge and my understanding of what progression looks like into the same space and be able to present it to politicians without them being able to rule me out of the game based on the fact that I think they're pricks. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. So, like, when I was in college, I learned about the three faces of power. And one of the faces of power was being able to set the agenda. And I took that to heart straight away. And I was like, well, what will stop me being able to set the agenda? What will stop me being sitting to set the agenda? What will stop me sitting around the table with the Justice Department discussing the expungement of minor convictions?

And it will be if I just keep attacking them and keep voting no, no, no, no, no. They're just going to shut the doors down on me. So I need to use my skills as an addiction worker and as a community worker and bring it into that space because you know people write laws and legislation because they think they know better than you but they're talking in the abstract they're talking about things they've never experienced before but if you can bring your knowledge and your personal experience into that space

they can't argue with your lived reality so I need to make sure that I conduct myself in a way that I can sit in the room and set the agenda because it is one of the faces of power and if I just keep you know if I just attack attack attack I won't be invited into the room you know and then I need to acknowledge what role am I playing in terms of social movements and social change because I'm not what I'm doing is I'm looking at incremental changes. What is the bill in front of me? How can I change that so that it doesn't affect the people that I care about and the people that I love?

So I need to be able to balance that. If I see a massive social surge of left-wing politics, I need to then be able to drop that relationship building that I've done as an independent senator and join the movement. But right now, I know what I'm doing. And what I'm doing is I'm trying to make changes to policy that ends up in front of me.

And I'm trying to create access for people who have minor convictions that have addiction to be able to enter education, to be able to enter the workforce. And that's just where I need to focus right now and you know it's probably not ideal in terms of big massive social change but i'm using the skills and tools that i have right now to be able to implement that so i do judge them as people that have an addiction to power and they do and you know what maybe i do too now because i have a platform that I never had before, and they're not fucking taking it on.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. So in the years that you were working in the community, in addiction services, what what was the biggest thing you took from that what did you learn about the human condition from doing that do you know what it's not even that deep it's like that could be me so it's always known at every moment that something that someone else is experiencing is not too far away from your own experience and and for me

working with the community sounds like it's something removed from me but it's not when I was working with the community I was working with me I was working with people like me I was working with people that um do you know what and I felt I felt a guilt as well because I was absolutely mental I was broken and I'm an addict true and true I've every addict behavior I've lived my life with rage I've hurt people that I care about I've had behaviors that weren't accepted by society and would have been judged I you know and I still have some of them so I'm no different than the people that I've worked with and work for so what what I learned is just that I am one of a few that managed to walk away from a life of heroin addiction and I always wonder why I'm not an addict in terms of having to use a

substance daily and I think there's a very fine line between me and the people that I work with are you talking about a kind of like a survivor guilt type of thing massively massively because what's the point you know when I when I wrote my book and when I wrote my book I was so afraid of how people were going to view me and judge me and the things that I was going to share whether it be about addiction whether it be about the anger in me that has really negatively affected the people that I love so my trauma and how that manifests in my family you know because it's not that like people try and herald me some sort of sure look isn't she great look what she's done and I'm like well look at the fucking destruction I've left behind like you know this doesn't it's there I've hurt people and I've caused that and you know when I wrote the

book I just I I realized when I got to the end that it wasn't middle Ireland it wasn't politicians it wasn't even Trinity it was oh my god am I going to be rejected by my own community for writing this? And I realized there and then why I'm doing this, where my heart is and who I'm fighting for. And what is the point of me succeeding if they're not there with me? What is the point? It's just another anomaly. I'm just a person that will be used as a weapon

against their own community and saying, well, why didn't all yous do that? Look at her, you know? And the neoliberal fucking, you know, machine used as a weapon against their own community and saying well why didn't all yous do that look at her you know and the neo-liberal fucking you know machine will use me and use my story to be other people over the head that haven't managed to do what i've done and that's not fair because i am an i am an anomaly in the sense of the political sense. But so many people succeed in their communities. Nobody wants to tell their stories. Stories are told in the news as extremes,

where it's only ever told when something bad has happened. And that's just not an accurate picture, you know? So for me, like, it's, you know, I really learned who I am and what I'm about by writing my story and who I wanted to accept me. And it was actually my own community. And you spoke there about the trauma that you've been through in your life, right?

When you sat down to write that book, which is like a biography, what was that process like? Did you have to... Is there anything you had to write about in that book right but it's like memories you hadn't confronted or anything and you're fucking going through that as the process of writing um two things i suppose i won't um i won't go into it now but one of them would have been um a sexual assault that i had to for the very first time talk to my family about and the other one was

possibly facing up to the idea of who I thought I was so I was a teen mother that fought her way through many obstacles but I had to probably face that I wasn't possibly the best mother I should have been to my children. So I was in a space where trauma was very much in me. I didn't realize anger. And then I used to try and make excuses for that a lot. So I used to always say, oh, well, I wouldn't have got where I was if I wasn't so determined and I wasn't so angry and I wasn't so this. but actually my existence and my experiences was having an intergenerational impact and I'm the one that fights in policy and fights at a government level to try and stop the intergenerational impact of trauma and poverty and you know lack of employment or lack of education but I didn't manage to stop the trauma at me and that's something I had to realize with the book

that I actually passed on a huge amount of the trauma that I and that's something I had to realize with the book that I actually passed on a huge amount of the trauma that I experienced straight down into the next generation behind me and in terms of like just self-learning and self-development do you think writing the book was it was it a good or a bad thing from where you are right now it was an amazing thing yeah I think I'm a better person I think I've I've been in therapy since I'm a young since I'm young you know and but with this was um I've always gone on the line from the people that I've worked with that have been an addiction and they would say to me you're only as sick as your secrets you're only as sick as your secrets so I feel that the book allowed me to face up to

myself and some of those secrets and be able to put them out there and I suppose I also had a huge fear being a politician that um somebody would go away and write my story for me yeah and I wanted to give an accurate picture of what my life was like what my what my family's life was like what their what my daughter's father's lives were like and I wanted to do that in a in a way that we had an input to how our story was told because so many working class people get stories told about them. It's always somebody else telling their stories. It's always a journalist that cares about us writing their stories. It's always an NGO that wants to fight for us telling their stories. It's always politicians who are middle class who happen to care about the working class

telling their stories for us. So for me, it's like, until we're actually telling the stories for ourselves, we've absolutely no amount of equality in this country. So you have to hear my accent, you have to hear traveller accents, you have to hear migrant accents. And until they're there,

well then, you know, there's no point in people doing things for us. We need to be in the room doing that. So the book was a big part of me being able to make sure that if my story was going to be told, I was going to be the one that told it. Fair fucking play.

One question that was asked there, because you mentioned the immigrant community. How does Lynn believe we can better integrate immigrants into society without creating the us versus them narrative? I think... I think I struggle to speak for... Like, I just gave a speech about when people speak for each other and speak people speak for themselves and then I asked that question

sorry so I'm kind of reluctant I suppose to speak on behalf of a community and to speak with any real authority in terms of what they need and want all I can say is that um we all benefit from equality we all benefit from diversity um for me the system in terms of how we process applications i mean if you look to i'm sorry for being political but to look at the budget issue you're a fucking politician then for fuck's sake i'm not don't tell anyone she said i her, I remember the first time I met you, started roaring at me. I roared at me. Why the fuck am I not

on your podcast? Are you not having me on because I'm a politician? Screaming at me, mortifying me. I absolutely took the fucking head out, right?

And I was, it was the first time he'd ever met me. I was like, here you. But I felt he never had politicians on. I don't like getting kind of siloed into that because I feel that I've pursued politics

as a means and a way to have a narrative on the table in terms of policy. So I didn't want to be ruled out on them grounds. And I felt it was an injustice, flying by, an injustice. But in terms of immigrants, I think the problem is, I'm on the committee

for issues facing the travelling community. And a man called Patrick Nevin, a traveller man who runs the Tala Community Development Project, he said something that really, really impacted on me. And he said that travellers have been used as the template for racism in this country. And we didn't challenge it then, you know,

with our own original Irish people. And it's like the same process is happening again where we ostracise communities. And I think we just really need to own up and have real conversations about you know what what is what what is actually wrong with you if you can't just look at another person and get like I don't I really struggle to understand racism and I under I struggle to understand why people have an issue with colour accent anything like that and and for me it's you know we need to fix the system first of all we need to stop media outlets and we need to stop how information is shared online in terms of

um the migrant community yeah like i mean you're one from fina gale getting fucking sauntered through a direct provision center so that she could say all of a sudden she doesn't think that people from a migrant background are deprogrammed and we keep platforming it like even now we're platforming hate like yeah that one scared the fuck out of me because

it's like she's a politician and she'd just seen a few too many Facebook memes but that's what it is what she was saying it made me realise I know loads of ma's and da's and friends and they just have

these really shit opinions that they get from something they saw on Facebook and they run with it and it was naive of me but to go holy fucking hell she's a politician and she's really ignorant do you know what i mean well i see i think for a long time politicians have been expected to just be politicians and that's somehow they know what they're doing where someone like me or someone

from a different background comes into politics we have to work a million times harder than everyone else because we are proving ourselves on behalf of a particular ethnicity group community blah blah blah and you have politicians just walking to Leinster House every day and I'm sitting there going my God, like they've been in government the last 30 years. What the fuck is that coming out of their mouth? And it's the most ignorant, like they don't even read the legislation that's in front of them. Like it happened during the legislation

on the Eighth Amendment. It ended up all over the news, of course, because my mouth jumps in. But like this politician walks in and he started spouting stuff that was not even part of the debate it wasn't in the legislation but he's never been questioned for 20 years it's just assumed it's just assumed because he's a politician he knows what he's doing like like i don't know the the the wheels of politics right how the fuck does that happen like why doesn't

someone say you're talking out of your arse? Well, I did say that. But are you in the doll? You're in the shanid. Well, what distinction are you making there between the doll and the shanid? See, I don't fucking really know what I'm talking about, I'll be honest. I'll be honest, like, I know the shanid

is the one people who are elected from universities or something, isn't it? No, there's only six of us out of 60 elected from universities. But you're not in the doll, are you? No, hang on a minute now. It's a different room, isn't it? He's trying to rile me up now.

I'm not! I haven't a fucking clue. I honestly haven't a clue. I'll reef you, right? You're listening. So the Shannon and the doll, the upper house and the lower house, yeah? Yeah.

So historically, of course, the doll has been the one that gets reported on and gets all the news and blah, blah, blah, right? But if you actually look statistically at what the Sianad receives, which is the upper house, so legislation has to go through the Sianad through five stages, and then it has to go through the Dáil through five stages, and vice versa. So if it starts in the Dáil, it has to go through the Sianad. So no piece of legislation actually comes into law without being seen by both houses we amend it we we we critique it we spend a lot of time like the amount of amendments i want to legislation that don't get aired because because one of the a lot of

questions that i got that were very cynical were again it was it was daz and they were saying uh how does she feel to have a job that has no power like would you agree or disagree with I disagree I would I would um and I understand historically that that has been the view so I don't think that that's unfounded what they're talking about because in the past you know government have had a majority amount of senators in the in the senate which means that you don't really have power right but like say tomorrow my bill uh is going to pass committee stage on um liberalizing the expungement of minor convictions yeah right now that's that's practically unheard of for an independent left-wing senator to be able to get things through those stages right if you actually

can you simplify what that is what what is what is the legislation those words that you said sorry what's that so to break it down so currently in Ireland um if you have one conviction on your record you'll be able to get it spent after seven years yeah now to exclude violent sexual crimes, murder, they're excluded from the legislation, so they're not actually in the conversation. They're different legislation. So, other convictions.

If you have one conviction, you can't get that taken off your record for seven years, which means, in a lot of cases, you can't travel to America, you can't access certain degrees, you can't study medicine, you can't access certain degrees you can't study medicine psychology addiction social work um and most people um that have one conviction um you know generally a lot of people don't re-offend right so you have the people that don't re-offend but they'll have to wait seven years but then you have people that maybe were in addiction at the

time so maybe they committed five offenses in one day they will never even two offenses will never ever ever be removed off your off your record ever so every time you try and study a certain degree or you try and do a certain course do you know what and you know what's affecting now men and women trying to volunteer with their local GAA clubs sports clubs summer projects things like that and you all of a sudden have to explain that 10 years ago when you were 19 you happened to rob of a shop on these whatever occasions and all of like that it just stays with you so you are eternally punished yeah and rehabilitation is non-existent and basically for the rest of your life you will pay for that for that crime which is fucking horrendous so my legislation um liberalizes that so it removes the barrier in which how many crimes can be removed so instead of looking at

how many crimes someone committed, you're looking at how long are they not offended for. So you're looking at the gap in which someone has offended. So instead of looking at seven years, you're going, well, it was only theft of... Like, I was in court as a kid, so I'm an ex-offender. I robbed cars, I robbed shops, I robbed all sorts. But now I'm a national legislator.

So can you imagine all the potential out there that's not being able to access employment you know imagine how great the justice department would look at if it actually had some intel yeah yeah you know so basically it's just about expanding that you know I'm reading a book at the minute by Michel Foucault. And he kind of maps out how we moved from public torture to prisons. You know, so you're moving from the public spectacle of taking someone's life because of a crime they committed. So the control of one's body to the control of one's soul and future and that's where we're at now so you have a judge you have a police

you have a justice department they'll all make a judgment on this person but then they can step away and never have to experience this person again yeah because isn't foucault's thing it's like he viewed almost like the public execution as being more humane than what we currently do yeah i'm not promoting that. It's the sanitization. I'm not promoting that. No, but it's... But yeah, because it means that...

His parents were doctors or something. But it means... But he was a communist as well. Yeah. So it means that the person actually making the judgment on somebody had to have a direct relationship. Yeah.

So the executioner who made a judgment was involved in the execution but now you have people this you know this far removed from somebody drone killings like it's sanitizing yeah brutality as such exactly yeah exactly yeah so that's that's what the legislation is so have you had much resistance have you had much resistance against that legislation no no no so when you explain it to politicians they're like, fuck it Lynn, that makes sense. Yep. Fair play.

Do you know why? Because they're all getting emails as well. I've had ministers ring me and say so Lynn, I just got an email and this fellow was caught with cannabis in 1998 and I'm like you're asking me your own legislation. Well well just support

me legislation and tell him it'll be so overdue so like i mean very good even though it really negatively impacts working class communities because the beat on the street so just imagine you're in in a community that doesn't need over policing so you're a young man you're living in a certain community you have weed in your pocket but if you're a young man you're living in a certain community you have weed in your pocket but if you're a young man in in jobstown or killin arden and you've weed in your pocket what's the likelihood of you bumping into a guard or a stop and search they're very very different so you've same people committing the same crimes but only certain people ending up in court and the prison system yeah you know so like it's it's it is a class issue as well. But you do have people that can't even apply for promotions,

say, in the HSE. And you have guards going, oh, they're from a good family, it's grand, we'll just throw the weed away and talk to the parents. Yeah. Which is what happens. Well, it does. Yeah, it is a class issue.

It's time for you to get a pint and have a piss. And then we'll come back out in about 15 minutes is that alright? alright what's the crack? we were talking backstage while I was

explaining why I couldn't roll cigarettes I was bullied I was explaining why I couldn't roll cigarettes. I was bullied. I was bullied in school about rolling. I achieved a nickname. My nickname was Prittstick. Because when I was about fucking 13, I arrived

in with a joint that was rolled with Prittstick at home in my room. Dead fucking proud of myself. And then one of the boys in school figured out that I'd actually used, no, I admitted it, like a fucking eejit. And the name Prittstick stuck with me.

I was... But like, I mean, you're smoking a giant and basically sniffing glue at the same time. Like, that's a bit of a win-win. A little bit, but I lost the memory in my hands

of how to roll. And to this day, I cannot roll. So I have a bit of a bong. And I was over in fucking Los Angeles, and they had the pre-roll joints. And it was, you know, it made me very fucking angry. No, it did, because, like, here in Ireland, if you want to get a bit of baldy, you have to take whatever's going,

which means paranoia or whatever goes along with it. In Los Angeles, walking into a shop there, right, and just saying to them, literally at the counter, I want to feel, I want giggles at the start, then I want my lips to buzz, and then I want to feel that lovely feeling in my kneecaps. And your one behind the counter goes, yeah, we have that.

And hands me a... And she's gorgeous. Yeah. Nine fucking dollars. And I'm still walking around, like, in a little medical bag, and I'm walking around the place, hiding up my jumper,

and your one's going, it's okay, it's okay. Smoking it in front of guards and everything over there. Actually, they have a security company over there there and the back of their jacket says Garda I swear to God the Los Angeles, the lads that go to the banks to mine the money, Garda is the name of the company we were talking about the potentiality of

is that a word? it is now of if drugs were legalised in Ireland and utilising people who are already selling drugs and operating in the drugs market and the expertise that they have, and what could they... I didn't know this conversation was going out onto the stage,

but anyway, here we go. But it was a fantastic point. What were you getting at there? So, about ten years years ago mind the mic there it's on your chin it's a robot blowjob again is it it's a robot blowjob from a 60 year old with a droopy cock

who has it on your chin nothing unusual there so so nothing unusual there so so election material robot blowjobs in Rwanda but

yeah now when it comes to drug dealers so for me the conversation around addiction and the selling of drugs is often a similar conversation. So people get involved in drug dealing because of lack of resources, lack of opportunity. Everyone wants to succeed. It doesn't matter where you're from, what social class or group

or whatever country you're born into. People want the same things and they want to be able to um feel like they are successful and feel like that they're good at what they're doing so if if people feel deprived of a particular thing they will find the avenues in which they can succeed and often that is drug dealing and the biggest issue I suppose for most countries is the violence that goes with drug dealing and the biggest issue I suppose for most countries is the violence that goes with drug dealing is the thing that people are are rightly you know traumatized and upset by but the actual drug dealing itself is just one one part of that conversation and about

I'd say it was about 10 years ago myself and Dr Fiona O'Reilly and that runs the safety net services I don't know if any of you know like the mobile health unit that it's provides health care to people that need health care the most but are probably the least likely to receive it so it drives around the streets works with the homeless community the migrant community so many years ago we carried out a piece of research with 10 middle-ranking drug dealers. Now, that's not an actual scale. So we had to figure out what are middle-ranking drug dealers. So we definitely made that scale ourselves.

So we decided that in our frame of our piece of research, middle-ranking drug dealers were people that were making a profit from selling drugs within their communities so you're not looking at the international level of it you're looking at community drug dealing and it's people that were not on heroin so heroin obviously was one of the prime chaotic problematic drug uses at the time so they weren't feeding their own habit of either heroin use or crack use but they did engage in recreational drug use, so they did use cocaine and I developed the Taloc cocaine service which was one of the first responses, it was actually the first response to nasal cocaine use in the country back in the late 2000s. So it was working with that particular group and they had professional backgrounds as well you know and and the clientele was very different so when we carried out the

research with them with 10 of them it was like an ethnographic kind of anthropology so it wasn't statistical based we spent time with people we told our stories and one of the treads that came up amongst um those drug dealers were um they were 12 and 13 when they started drug dealing. And the primary reason for those, it was all men, was that they wanted to have the same things that other people maybe living next door or on the street had. So some people started selling drugs because they didn't want, one quote in the thing was,

I didn't want to wear my older brother's hand-me-downs anymore and that was his motivation at the time another motivation was from a man that wanted to not a man it's not even fair to say a young boy who wanted to raise enough money to be able to get weatherglaze windows and at the time the council hadn't started putting weatherglaze windows in every house. It was just the people that could afford it started putting porches on their houses and weather-glazes. And he was like, we're getting slagged, like, because, you know, and I just want to get weather-glazed windows. And another fellow wanted to buy an adequate amount of cutlery for his house because there was, like, 12 kids in the house.

And he sometimes, of a morning going to school, would have to eat a cereal out of the sink, so there was all these comments, that were coming at me, and so for me, people started applying their natural ability, to be able to think logically, and reason, and go well how do I get myself out of this situation,

and the thing that I'm presented with, is that I can make money as a 12, 13, 14 year old young man from selling hash or e or speed and I did as well as a 12 and 13 year old I sold speed and e and for me I felt all of a sudden that we were joking about it out the back but I was like my maths teacher kept telling me I was terrible and I kept asking questions going I don't understand I don't understand but all of a sudden I was sitting at home in my ma's kitchen going quarter eight yeah chop that up chop that up chop that up and I was like who the fuck is not good at maths do you know what I mean so all of a sudden I was just and I didn't understand the impact it was more going I can do this actually and people are

telling me I'm good at this and I'm making a bit of money off this and so all of a sudden my sense of value and sense of self and my sense of being able to compete in the world became from came from something that society said was wrong and you shouldn't do that and that's where the you know the conflict comes up but then you look at countries that begin to legalize drug use and they they talk about how you can take the drug market out of the hands of people that are killing people and violence and and that's all completely understandable but the conversation that's not happening is what happens to those group of people that have you know their their local economy is built on a huge amount of of drug dealing so they don't all of a sudden just decide to you know work in Microsoft

or Google or these places but they've all these skills so we can't have a conversation about legalization without having a conversation about the competencies and skills that exist within some communities and if we if we want an end to crime and violence can we not have a conversation about the competencies and skills that exist within some communities. And if we want an end to crime and violence, can we not have a conversation that includes people that want to exit, that actually want to exit drug dealing? But they've been 10, 20, 30 years drug dealing. They don't have a work record.

They can't say, oh, well, I've been travelling for 30 years. You know, so their CV is completely empty. But actually's a huge amount amount of people that want to exit so how can we match the conversation up around legalization and around people that have skills in a market you know and actually what can like and I've brought this up I've met with um I was in Edinburgh recently where I met with prosecutors from all around the world and state attorneys from America and everyone is having these same conversations and like in Colorado where they legalized marijuana and they're now saying that obviously they felt that they were going to have a positive impact on crime but criminals don't just stop being criminals so how do we include people in that transition and it is a controversial

conversation one of the things that i noticed from listening to in california right and one of the angers that people have is so cannabis is recreationally legal now in california but the dispensaries and the business side of things is becoming quite privileged and white. That the white, like black and brown people who come from marginalised communities and didn't have money were being sent away to prison. Now it's legal, but they're not seeing enough black and brown people owning the cannabis businesses. It's middle class and upper class white people

who have the capital to start these businesses. But it's like saying, so we'll have mass incarceration in america for black people right mass incarceration and you have white middle class people doing the exact same thing as a particular community but yet they were criminals and they should be locked up and they should have their lives removed from them but yet there's no difference um one is illegal and one is illegal and and a positive about legalizing obviously drugs is um the quality of drugs that someone receives so i mean you know you have if it's legal it means that someone's going to be using a drug that is much safer than they would be if it was being chopped up on the street and stuff so there's a huge amount of positives to legalisation

and it's not something that I'm against. It's something I'm for. I fight for decriminalisation because I don't think we're there yet on the conversation on legalisation. Where do you stand on, we'll say, what Portugal have done with drugs? Yeah, so my bill that I tabled

within a year of being a politician for drug decriminalisation is based on the Portuguese model. And can you tell us what that is for people who don't know so basically it's it's actually quite liberal in portugal and compared to what i think ireland is is is is ready for so it's 10 days supply is seen as as personal use and it's not everything like everything everything yeah so i don't differentiate between what drugs so me, decriminalisation is about decriminalising marginalisation and decriminalisation of addiction, decriminalisation of poverty and just decriminalisation of the person.

So the drug is still illegal in a decriminalisation model, but the person is decriminalised in terms of the fact that they are in addiction or it's for their their personal possession so what happened with my bill was which is currently still adjourned and the department asked me would I not push my bill at that time and they would set up a working group to to discuss decriminalisation and the problem with that working group is that there was just a hell of a lot of vested interests at that table dpp guards and civil servants and there was two people that have been through addiction themselves and being through services but against a huge institutional you know judges

and and one of the judges um on that working group actually brought out a minority report and said basically said that people who were caught for their own possession who were in addiction should get harsher harsher penalties you know and this is a man that's been at the helm of like where you think he would understand that people that are coming before him that are in addiction like in port Portugal the rate of blood borne viruses has decreased because you're not sending people that have addiction who are going to be sharing needles who maybe have blood borne viruses into a system where they're not going to have access to clean needles or you know so it really didn't make sense to me what he was doing it made no sense at all so what we have

what we're what we have now is another kind of proposition from the government that is a little bit moved on from what we have but it's still a law for middle class people because basically if you're caught once with drugs you will be sent to maybe like a health care professional but if you're caught more than once then it becomes a crime so the only people that will be caught more than once are people who are in addiction because what's the likelihood of someone in addiction going oh I was caught with drugs I am clean now and I will never have drugs in my pocket again thank god for the prohibition you know what a great law you know so basically we do have a health department and I will give it to the health department I think if it wasn't for the justice department in this country the health

department would have actually introduced decriminalization but you have a justice department who is constantly battling against the health-led approach. So it's not just about us getting the health services on board, which I actually think we could do. It's actually the Justice Department who still want to see harsher sanctions. It's like this idea of, oh my God, won't someone think of the kids? Don't be telling the kids that it's all right to use drugs as if prohibition has actually even helped that in any shape or form do you know i mean but when is it all right to use the experience and pain and suffering of an addict as an example to other people why is that all right why is it all right to lock somebody up because they're in possession of a drug just so you can act as a harm to somebody else that's not okay like you know

um how does everyone in this room and everyone listening the podcast help you with re-election get a trinity degree yeah no how does it that's the thing like in a very... I'm not saying that now just because you're on... Genuinely, I want to see you re-elected. I want to see you continue doing the things you do. Do we have any sway or power or do we have to make friends with somebody who's in Trinity? Is that what it comes down to? Yeah, so it's extremely early.

So since I've been elected, we've been fighting for Shannon reform. There was a referendum... Can you explain the House Senators and the Senators relationship with universities what is that so first of all can we just acknowledge

his movement on supporting a politician on stage she's not with a party she's not with a party I'm ok platforming politicians as long as i'm not with a fucking party i'll have her and i'll have ming flanagan everyone else can fuck off so no but i do i want to see lynn continuing to do her thing until she's eventually president and i mean yeah i mean that um so i'm on a very elite panel.

And I know that sounds ironic and hypocritical. But when I ran for the Senate on the Trinity panel, so basically Trinity graduates can vote for me to stay elected. And I want to take that as a positive because I obviously acknowledge the class divide, the digital divide, all of that so much. But it's actually people who are not impacted by the class divide the digital divide all of that so much but it's actually people who are not impacted by the class divide that actually put me where I am and I think that that's a real sign of movement in Ireland that there's a whole cohort of people that have degrees and doctorates and

they're in their professions and they're going to know what we're going to vote for her yeah there's actually nothing she can do for us but she represents a particular voice and a particular community and we're going to support that and I think I take that as a massive massive honor really because um when I was elected I didn't think I was going to be elected I ran on the platform so that I could be on the stage in a hustings with people so that I could try and mold the conversation in a particular direction so that I was just part of the actual conversation but the only other person to get in on the front first run as far as I'm aware is Mary Robinson and the only other person to unseat an incumbent was 20 years ago and that was David Norris so you have two absolute trailblazers

that have only ever kind of messed up them statistics and then you had me and i was kind of like going what the fuck now i have to be a senator i've absolutely no clue what this is about but lynn before you became a senator right and when you were in trinity college like what what was were you getting involved in activism in trinity college like what were you doing in trinity college Senator even became something he wants us to do so no I didn't get involved straight away in Trinity and what did you study in Trinity uh so I studied a four subject degree which was political science philosophy economics and sociology and I went to Trinity so I could learn a language of people that I felt were keeping me out of the conversation because our services and communities

were being completely destroyed and we had politicians speak to us in a language that was actually just developed to actually stop us being able to engage with them. So not just speaking in plain, accessible language. And it's a real tool. It's a real, you don't know what you're talking about, so we're going to talk all this shite until you feel like you don't know what you're talking about so we're going to talk

all this shy until you feel like you don't know what you're talking about so I wanted to try and break through that so when I went to Trinity I went purely to study um and my dad was really ill with dementia in the in the time that I was in Trinity and I obviously had two young daughters so I used to go into study and it was quite obviously had two young daughters so I used to go into study and it was quite lonely as a mature student because I used to go into study and I used to just run home to be able to do the things I needed to do as as a mother and as a daughter of an older parent so I didn't really get to engage and I think that's a real um issue for either mature students or working class students because sometimes the things you're learning in the

classroom you can't bring home and discuss like now I used to bore the life out of my kids and my ma reading philosophy essays so they were massively supportive but in terms of being able to do the engagement what's this about or what's that about wasn't there but as the years went on I was in about my third year and I ran for student parent officer and there had never been a student parent officer in Trinity and I ran for that basically because there had never been a student parent officer so I felt I can mold this and shape this now I'm not kind of following but when I was in that position and the the current president at the time Donald McLachlan Bourne who's a doctor now who was one of the most intelligent articulate socially aware people that i've ever ever met had and has had a massive impact on my

life just kept saying to me you should be president everything he said everything i've got in private school and everything i've got from my privileged background doesn't even match in the slightest to the experience that you have in working with communities and you know everything that you bring to the table and it was him that that pushed me forward to run for the presidency of the union and at first I didn't believe him and it was more because I just was like who the fuck wants some L1 running the students union you know and me and the kids moved into Trinity on front square like and it was an amazing experience because my youngest girl especially is absolutely mental and the Chinese tourists used to be out on the on the front square

right and she used to open the window right and like they make so much money off tourists and Jay Linda she used to go, get out of me fucking garden. So like, it was just an amazing experience. But why, swear to God, will you get me chill and come in the shop? Or Air Max, the runners drying on the balcony. I used to be like, I fucking love that, but so the experience was amazing, but actually was people that were from a different, completely different lived experience than me, that kept

going, you do that, you do that, you'd be great at that, and it was the same with the senate, they said to me, just run. You have a profile now. It's very hard to get elected in the Senate if you don't have a profile. So it was all very instant. It wasn't something that I ever thought that I was going to be doing, you know? Yeah.

And a lot of the questions I got were wanting to know, did you ever have to deal with imposter syndrome? Yeah, totally. All the time. I syndrome yeah totally all the time i still do you know i still do um and probably one of the reasons why i wrote the books i was like just tell them everything tell them everything and then if they ever deny you you'll say sure fucking wrote that 10 years ago what's wrong um yeah no totally um i've told a story before but i know in my first um in my first few months within the Shannon, obviously there was no government formed.

So it was ages before we actually got to sit because the confidence and supply agreement was being discussed and blah, blah, blah. And I remember on two different things that made me feel like, oh, what are you doing? Why are you here? And I get extra tallow when I'm in places. So I'm like, I'm here. Where am I meant to be what's the fucking story and it's like it's like all of a sudden I'm going you're not going to reject me I'm going to be every bar of me that I can you know I asked my to buy me a sovereign and all this Christmas I'm like I'm fucking why did I pawn all my jewelry like I'm here now like do you know where's me clown and um but in the first few weeks in the shanid

a few months because we were waiting on the confidence and supply agreement and I had two things that happened to me um I launched the shanid reform uh bill with 10 other senators to try and reform how people vote for the shanid so that it's a much more democratic process and as I was walking away, a senator said, oh, this is what happens when you let the plebs in. So that was one comment. And I obviously fought back against that initially. And the newspapers rang me and said,

do you want us to comment on that? And I was like, I actually prefer you wouldn't, because I don't actually want to make, you know, I'd rather just be able to get on with my job. I don't want this to become the defined moment of me walking through the shanty. Now, he apologised later on, and he said he was, you know I'd rather just be able to get on with my job I don't want this to become the defined moment of me walking through the shanty now he apologized later on and he said he was you know he was joking and and I'm sure he was and I'm well able usually but you know when you're just in an environment that you're not used to it was like oh and the other thing was um I had a

dream a reoccurring dream and in the dream I had bought a suit in Grafton Street like I think it was a Tommy Hill figure like navy skirt suit and it was very like Fianna Fáilish or something like that fucking like obviously when my head was going you need to look a certain way dress a certain way like this navy blue suit is obviously what you're supposed to be wearing so in the dream it happened for about three or four nights I bought the suit right and I hung it up in my office and by the way I fucking fought like fuck for one of the biggest offices in there I was like I'm here squatters rights you don't need to get in here but I had this suit hanging in it right and in the dream I put the suit on and I kept walking into the Shannon chamber and my first contribution in the dream, I put the suit on. And I kept walking into the Shannon Chamber.

And my first contribution in the Shannon Chamber was actually on drugs with Simon Harris. And I was absolutely petrified. And in the dream, my suit, my navy, like proper Fianna Fáil-ish looking suit, kept turning into a pair of Mickey Mouse fleece pyjamas. Are you fucking serious? I swear to God. I swear to god I swear to oversized huge not even fitted on me huge Mickey Mouse fleece pajamas and I just kept and every time I

went in the chamber I went oh what the fuck and I rang back in and I put on the suit and every time I went back out again I turned back into the big fleecy Mickey Mouse pajamas and in my head I was like what the hell is that all about so on that Saturday my ma said will you go to the Vivo which is the Casanta where we used to play snooker in Kilnarden which is now the Vivo which is now the Mace and um my ma said will you go over and buy me the TV magazine now the sun and I was like I'm fucking walking over in my pajamas. I have to face whatever this dream is. And I walked over and actually a friend of mine, I remember writing on Twitter saying,

is it all right for me now to walk to the shop in my pajamas? Now that I'm an elected senator. And a friend of mine said, totally. So I was like, grand. So I walked over in my pajamas to the Vivo, bought me by The Sun. I'm raging she doesn't smoke because I feel like there should be 20 blue as well in this story but I went back home and then on the Monday I on the Tuesday I just went into the chamber and I said you know what that whole dialogue that's happened in my head is me saying they're all

going to look at you when you start opening you know when you start talking you're supposed to look a certain way dress a certain way um and a friend of mine um I wrote about him in the book Chekhov Feeney um I went to him and I said what am I going to wear before I have to speak and he he came shopping with me best shopper ever and he was like picked the most skimpiest dress there was tattoos everywhere and I just went in like completely raw completely me tattoos all over the place and and I just had to face that but I probably stemmed from being called a pleb or something in the first few days but yeah I did face that imposter syndrome and I still do but not to the same extent a friend of mine told me years ago when it pops up now knowing like when

it comes up now you know what it is now how do you deal with it in the moment when it pops up again being familiar with it um I think I look at my success and achievements and what I've achieved in the Senate now, and I know that it's a million times more than most of them are achieving on a daily basis in there. And I, like, you know, a few, two weeks ago, there was a session in the Senate, which wasn't a Shannon session, it was a committee on, like, your woman from the grey hack and all was in, like, I mean, really high level people talking about the bias and algorithms and how fake news is threatening democracy. And, you know, it was a really high level. And I sat in the committee and I didn't speak for ages because it's illiteracy that I have to get used to because I don't have a computer science background and I'm

listening and I'm listening. And then I seen a Fianna Fáil politician you just can look back on the record yourselves and he he stands up and proper high level like I mean talking about how elections are being like how Trump gets in how Brexit happens proper really really important stuff and he stood up and he waited for everyone to be finished and he said well uh facebook my daughter has facebook i don't have facebook but she raised 1000 euro for our local charity on facebook therefore on Facebook. Therefore, Facebook is the vice of the viceless. And I remember just

sitting there going, 30 fucking years he's here. Oh, fuck. And I was like, how could I ever second guess myself? How could I ever, ever second guess myself when this is the type of tripe

that's coming from people that are like, it's such an important conversation happening and they just arrive and say whatever the fuck comes into their head. And utter entitlement. Whatever the fuck he says, he's entitled to think that it has value

and doesn't fucking question it. Ross Common, from Ross Common. Ross Common. and doesn't fucking question it Ross Common from Ross Common Ross Common Lynn is fabulous are there any techniques

or approaches she's developed to either manage undercut or draw attention to classist language or structures in the political spheres

she moves in whoa yes yes i do i i pick up on classes language a lot and i even pick up on it in legislation and i think that's the importance of having diversity around the table discussing policy because people will pick on up on what most affects them so i do pick up on classes language um i mean it gets aimed at me enough um in terms of how I speak if I course how does that like what's your experience in in the channel of classes and

being directed against you so sometimes it's not directed directly at me so sometimes it's just in the conversation yeah um I suppose to look at it it sometimes it's like well Jesus look at the name of my book yeah so there it is right so my book is called people like me and that comes from the phrase that gets aimed at me all the time okay people like you don't even want an education people like you want everything for free people like you don't even want an education. People like you want everything for free. People like you don't even pay taxes. People like you don't even know how to spell responsibility. And it was them targeted lines that came at me that I was like, people like me?

And that's where the name came from. So it was actually a fellow politician that said to me at Vincent Brown's retirement party, and I've had that other stuff aimed at me, and that's where the name came from. So it was actually a fellow politician that said to me, a Finstead Brown retirement party, and I've had that other stuff aimed at me, and I've told them that this is not news to them. So a working class woman got up to give a big speech at Finstead's retirement party,

and she knew that was probably the last time that she was going to be on national television because Finstead always platformed people that needed to have their voices heard and that should have their voices heard. And she knew that with his retirement, that might change how that looks on late night telly. So she used that platform.

But as she was speaking, I could see some fellow colleagues kind of huffing and puffing and you know pulling faces and I went over and I said listen just leave it out Vincent absolutely loves her he did he's always welcomed what she said and she knows that this is probably the last time she will have all yous in the same room at the same time so just stop with the kind of attitude and he said to me people like you have never had to make a decision in your lives and people like you don't know how to spell responsibility and I remember looking at him going people like me would loaf the fucking head off you right now yeah

but I'm not going to I'm gonna walk away walk away, and I'm going to call my book, People Like Me, and it's going to be a bestseller, and fuck you. Ha ha! Yart! The last time I was chatting to you in Tallade there last week,

you have an awful amount of affection for Vincent Brown. Yeah. What's so classic? Like, I love Vincent, but what do you love about vincent brown come here like i like people that are who they are and say what they think and and that even means if they're saying something that i don't particularly like and i like people that present themselves in the same light that they would present themselves in a private room and that's exactly who vincent is for me and when i was launching the book i only wanted

vincent to talk to me because i felt he understood um the impacts of class and i you know and when we we met the other night for drinks it was quite funny and he said i probably shouldn't be saying this i'm sorry he doesn't give a fuck. I'm doing, I'm doing. I guarantee you. No, it's not me. It's like, actually, it's a Taylor Swift moment where I bring an ex-boyfriend in. But he turned around and he said to me last year when I was launching the book,

he said to me, I have two issues. I'm not going to say one of them, but one of them was, you talk about your boyfriend in it. You have a terrible track record. Are you sure you want to put him in and I was like yeah because that's exactly true as I'm telling it now and then the second we met the other night in Grogan's he went so you're still with your fella I was like no and he was like told you told you and then we were eating the back off of Eamon Ryan,

which I told you earlier. And we're giving out, going, what if they'll go into government? Eamon arrived into the pub, didn't he? And Eamon arrived in with two points. And I was like, listen, Eamon, I need to tell you, we were eating the back off. You sit down.

And Vincent ripped into him. But it was good. But it was good. It wasn't in a negative way. It was in, you know, it's in very much, listen, this is what I think. What do you think?

Let's fucking trash this out, you know, and that's what I love about Vincent. He's so fucking, he's sorely missed, isn't he? We need a bit of, I'd love to get him doing a fucking podcast.

Vincent Brown needs a fucking podcast without any TV tree or RT looking over him where he can talk. Jesus, imagine that. Fucking hell. fucking podcast without any TV3 or RT looking over him where he can talk. Jesus. Imagine that. Fucking hell. I'm going to convince him. Next time you're talking to him, convince Vincent to

fucking make a podcast. Jesus Christ. Is he living in Limerick? No, he's writing a book at the minute. So he's very slow to engage. He's writing a book on Charlie Hutty at the minute. So he's kind of to engage. He's writing a book on Charlie Hottie at the minute. So he's kind of really engaged with that. But he's not in Limerick, no.

I'm not telling you where he is. He's from Limerick. He's from Limerick. He's from Limerick. And he's given me the greatest Charlie Hottie stories I've ever heard in my life. And I'm not even going to tell you. But how many people here have been to Trinity College?

You'd never vote for Lin, would you? We understand the importance of empathy in helping people and their families recover. How can we increase empathy in the public for those who have addictions? Right, so... can we increase empathy in the public for those who have addictions right so like empathy i think sometimes people feel that empathy is the first protocol for people but it's not like empathy what becomes before empathy is understanding and exposure to and an open mind you know and I don't think everybody necessarily needs to have empathy I think people need to not feel the need to involve

themselves in other people's lives whether they have empathy or not so if it doesn't affect you just shut up and stay away from the subject like don't be forcing your opinion or your judgments or you know whatever on on people if it doesn't affect you stay out of conversation if you have empathy the biggest like i mean it's hard to explain empathy you know i think i think most people have empathy but it's hard to have empathy if the subject matter or the issue or the person feels so far beyond your reality yeah so it's about how do you actually connect people so that people have experiences of all walks of life and i think when it comes to empathy with addiction people have a lot of empathy with alcoholism because it does kind of um it filters into so many different people's lives. You won't find an Irish family

that isn't touched by alcoholism. But where heroin and crack and say benzo use, it's about why people use drugs. People have empathy for addiction. What people don't have empathy for is the people or the reasons or the communities in which they're from in terms of why they use drugs.

So there's a whole cohort of people that use drugs as a form of self-medication because of poverty, because of trauma, because of adverse childhood experiences, and they use drugs to completely numb every single thing they've ever experienced. And if that materialises in the form of heroin use or crack use or or benzo use people don't want to know but if it's a more socially accepted drug

people have more empathy to it and i think that that does breaks down the class stuff as well so it's about what types of drugs most affect particular communities so what i kind of hate right now about air government and i get on quite well with with simon harris but they i challenged him say during the week on his use that that addiction knows no geography and knows no demographic and that's just not true because the type of addiction does does discriminate and it does uh primarily impact on impact on working class communities you know and I don't know how I'm not on drugs you know from the things that I've experienced I just don't know and most days I wake up and I have to fight the want and need to numb out every experience

that I've ever had and I think when people understand that people think that addiction is a choice that it's some someone chose between I'm going to be an addict or I'm not going to be an addict and that's just that's just not the case it's never the case I don't know a single heroin addict of all my friends that have been heroin addicts or all my friends that have died that if you ever gave them the choice to be a heroin addict or not heroin addict, go on, go on and say a heroin addict. Is that a choice? Yeah, no, a heroin.

Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. So we need to move away from this idea that people have free will, autonomy, and agency when their environments are so unequal. You know, if their environments don't look the same, well, then we can't have the same agency autonomy as somebody that their environment looks safer.

And you can't be expected to have some level of social responsibility if your basic needs aren't met. So if your basic need of safety and security is not met, how can you even begin to be socially responsible for anything else when your basic level of suffering is so low yeah I'm going to move questions now

to the floor and the balcony oh Jesus dirty going on this gentleman And the balcony. Oh, Jesus, there you go now. This gentleman at the back. Did you have a question there or were you looking for a pint? The man in the Fred Perry shirt.

Oh, hold on. There's going to be a microphone over to you, sir. Now, do you know what happens sometimes when I ask for questions and one person enthusiastically gets up? They might possibly be mouldy.

Both. And I might refuse to comment. I've got two questions. Go on. For yourself. Later. When it comes to rock bottom... You're from Glasgow.

No. You're from Glasgow? No. You're from Galway? Oh, very good. Where are you from, brother? A different place in Scotland. Ayr, the west coast of Scotland. OK. But when people say rock bottom,

is there a place before you can ask someone what's going wrong like everyone says you have to hit rock bottom before you get to this place is there a stage before you can help someone yeah and addiction like yeah like i think you can help someone at every stage of addiction it doesn't necessarily mean that they will abstain from drugs so it's about how you respond at each and every stage and that's what love compassion and affection and also recognizing that sometimes their behaviors actually fuck your life up yeah like it's it's not ignoring that negative behaviors are attached to addiction but i don't think we need to wait to rock bottom before we help so it's this idea that we impose on people that help means abstinence when actually harm reduction at particular stages might be what's needed or just listen when you're ready I'm here

so there's certain ways to help but I think we need to get an idea in our heads of what we think that end product looks like and it might not be a positive thing so we might think that abstinence and them getting their life together is what rock bottom and then help looks like but it might be it's not linear it's a very long process so it's allowing people loop around and loop around and loop around you can only ever be in denial once you know and once once you pass denial you can help at any stage but it's about what that help looks like. And that's true as well, Lynn, not only with addiction,

but with mental health. And something you said there that's very important, it's like acknowledging that people with addictions, it's not pleasant to be around. They can fuck your life up. But same with people with mental health issues. We have this thing with the mental health conversation where it's like if your brother or sister is suffering from a mental illness or mental health that we have to have this unending compassion if you're around someone who has depression

they're pricks let's be honest i was a prick when i had depression i was pushing people away from me because i couldn't fucking accept and love myself and if anyone came to me with compassion I didn't fucking accept me so I was going hold on a second with your fucking compassion get the fuck away I'm gonna have to be a dickhead today because the emotions you're bringing to me are too fucking real and if you bring it to me I'll fucking break down so I'm gonna be a shithead and we all have to acknowledge that and it's okay even when someone around you has a mental health issue to go you're being a dickhead today i understand you're going through some shit but you're being a dickhead and that can actually work that's an act of empathy you're still entitled to

your fucking boundaries even though someone else is in pain. Do you get me? And you can do that in a non-judgmental fashion. Any other questions? Right beside the woman in the white jumper. Sure, the microphone's over there already. Handy out. Oh, no, sorry. He always wants the attention. Go on.

No, seriously, I absolutely understand what you're saying, right? And I just want to actually, in front of an audience, right? Microphone a little bit closer. Oh, no, I don't want to. Bring the microphone up a little bit. Listen, there's no point in fucking talking with the mic and going, I'm going to half talk into the mic now. Ah, fuck off.

Bring it up to your mouth. There you go. Oh, no, I totally get what you're saying, right? You're talking about mental health and everything, right? But it is, it's such a fucking like it's a really serious issue that we have here in Dublin you are amazing

sorry you're amazing as well but you are amazing now listening to you tonight is like we have to have more women empowerment especially in Ireland as well I actually want everyone to stand up not only for you because you are fucking deadly but literally for you can everyone stand up and give her fucking applause yeah give lynn a round of applause The only person on this podcast aside from Bernadette Devlin

who can get me to shut the fuck up. Thank you. No, seriously, you're unreal. I love how much you coursed in that contribution thank you very much any other questions this woman here with the black elbow

there we go I'm making things difficult for Usher, we difficult for Usher. We have actual Usher, the R&B singer. Who's handing the mic around. How are you? Hi, how are you? So just a question for Lynne is, obviously being a working class woman

and being in a, kind of having a public platform, do you feel like the the pressure not only because you're in the public but because of where you come from I know you talked about imposter syndrome and a need to prove yourself but do you ever just feel like you don't have all the answers and what do you do when someone has a question like probably right now you don't have an answer for this but I mean oh I have the answer yeah exactly but sometimes you're expected because you're in you're you've progressed through the ranks so much and you've made something of yourself.

And again, relative to other people and what they've made of themselves and what their success is. How do you react when someone expects something of you that you can't deliver or that you don't want necessarily to deliver? That's a very good question i think um i think it's it's not fair of me to think that i represent even everyone that say was in the same class as me can you mind the mic there so like people haven't um people have had different experiences of me and and or of life that have been quite close to me so i don't have all the answers or I don't have

all the experiences I kind of represent a particular group and and that's okay because it's usually the the most marginalized but what I try to do and I think it ties into the people that I work with in the senate so when we were elected um historically i should have been with this other independent senators that were elected through um the university senators but myself and alice mary higgins who was elected on the noi panel first met when we were elected and we said you know what the both of us have a civil society background and if we both have learned anything from working in terms of social justice or with people is that we don't have all the answers and we don both have learned anything from working in terms of social justice or with people is that we don't have all the answers and we don't have all the knowledge so why don't we

work together and try and get other senators to work with us and that's why we call ourselves the civil engagement group and every single piece of legislation or amendment that we work on we don't do it in isolation because there is people that know better than us so if people ask me a question I will try and answer it I won't just answer it for the sake of it or else I will try and link them with people that know the answer to that question and I'll very say listen that is not my area or I have an opinion on it but that doesn't mean that it's accurate and so within within the centre what we've done is there's six of us. There's myself, Alice Mary Higgins, Francis Black, the singer, and developed the Rise Foundation for families that have experienced addiction. Colette Keller, who was the CEO of Alzheimer's Foundation

and also ran Simon in Cork and Cope in Cork. And then you've John Dolan, who's the head of the Disability Federation of Ireland. And we all came together because we recognised that we had a particular role in terms of connecting civil society in what we do. So we try and not develop them answers ourselves. So every, say, my spent convictions legislation

that's up tomorrow, that has been primarily written by people that have convictions and the Irish Penal Reform Trust, it's not coming from me. So I try and make sure that them voices are heard in the political structures that I then try and implement in Parliament. I hope that answers it. We've got a mic up on the balcony as well does anyone have a question up on the balcony? This is where I realized my eyesight is fucked. Up there in the a gentleman in a red t-shirt and a gentleman in a black

jacket with a lavender t-shirt. Well how's it going? Can you hear me? You can. How are you? Well, how are things? I'd just firstly like to acknowledge the role, Blind Boy, that you've played. I work in hospital medicine and I've worked in Tala

and Blanche and in Beaumont and just the role you've played in this podcast and the vehicle has become as a front for young people to have...

Thank you very much. ...have a conversation about emotional intelligence and just what it's done like for me working in the cold face like there's a huge amount of people representing crisis from drugs addiction and suicide deliver itself arm and all the rest and like just being able to have a conversation and using your podcast as a as a as a way for people to have something they can use to just acknowledge that emotions exist and that there's a vehicle there for them to use to to express themselves so it's hugely beneficial like i found innumerable people have benefited from

cbt and all the things you talk about so i just want to acknowledge that first and foremost but thank you very much also just for Lynn like you know having worked in medicine for a few years now it's a pain to hold to be honest having to deal with things we deal with on a day to day basis and having no like end game inside where things are just getting worse and worse and worse

like we're having to deal with people in crisis because there's a failure of community based resources that just worse and worse like we're having to deal with people in crisis because there's a failure for community-based resources that just don't exist and we're having more and more people presenting at the end game when there's points in their trajectory that could have been you know someone something could have been done along the way to present to stop them presenting in the way they're presenting and I just feel like there is no like there's the beds crisis all that that's always in the news but what's I feel is the is the most important first point is to introduce things in the community,

like across the board, not just in disadvantaged areas, but in so-called privileged areas as well. And I don't think that's been addressed enough, that resources aren't being invested in places where it could make the biggest difference. So over the past few years, what you've said, and not only over the past few years, and not only over the past few years, you can map it back right to even when Fianna Fáil were in government, they started slowly removing, I suppose, community autonomy in terms of, especially in terms of health equity and decision making and local decision making around education and health. So over the past 10 years you've seen a move from taking a very decentralized approach to whether it be addiction and poverty and they've tried to

pull it back central to stay and you can see that in some of the even um that were like what i talk about that has been usually kind of forced upon the community sector especially and you're right they shouldn't be getting to that point it should be within the community but the community have been completely devalued in terms of the role that they play and they do that by introducing structures that are trying to view people as outputs and uh human experience rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch

your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com experience that as if they fit into some sort of metrics you know so if you don't have a percentage of people from the community entering employment because they've engaged in some sort of educational experience, well, then that's a failure. So it's like they're applying private market measurements to community health and community addiction, and people just can't... Like, human complexities of life don't fit into that. So massive funding is constantly being removed from the community sector to be able to do their job.

And I think especially when it comes to addiction, the likes of myself keep advocating for a health-led approach. And it's like the HSE are mishearing that. I'm not saying HSE-led approach. I'm saying health-led approach. But yet they keep taking the skills. And like many years ago when we set up community projects in the community in the most deprived communities right community projects and addiction projects they were local people mostly local women and priests were involved everybody built it from the ground up and then

during the Celtic Tiger you're seeing this swoop in where they said oh you're not professional enough to run this local community project. You need a degree or a master's. So we're going to push all that local knowledge, all that local understanding that could actually be that forced intervention. We're going to push you out because you aren't now good enough to run this show.

And now what they're doing is, anybody that was left from that, they're now kind of trying to move those services back to a privatised model or a central model. Like CDPs were privatised, community development projects privatised. And addiction services are also being seen through that lens of some sort of market model where people are outcomes. And it completely misses that human development. completely misses that human development. So say in Ancasan, where I trained as a kid,

at 16, as a young mother, they have to measure their success based on how many women leave that project in employment. When that's not an actual measurement of development within communities that don't have very little to stop them getting to crisis point. So the actual outcome of a programme within a particular community project might be that that woman left a domestic violence situation.

That might be her outcome, but that's not measured. So the government doesn't see that as a measurement. It's only if that woman was employed. So the problem is that we're ending up at that crisis point at your level is because actual community development and community work has been completely devalued and has been completely centralised

and has had market models imposed on it and has completely lost the human entity of what it is. Lynn, would you ever consider not like joining a political party but like trying to get into a position where you can make things better no but you're like

no no no that's wrong would you like how can you be like minister for health give me an example of someone that's in a small left wing party that's making things more better than I am. That's the fucking problem. That's the thing. Do you view it as a systematic issue?

Would you ever consider going out of the shanty and trying to become a minister or being a politician, not necessarily join a party? Let me throw out something unusual there. The doll has a power. The government has a power to make a senator a minister okay it's only ever been used twice before right my goal right now is whatever about being used twice before is to now make it be used without me having a government whip okay so the only reason i'll ever

become a minister is if the government doesn't make me actually vote with them because i'm not gonna vote with them do you know what i mean so it's it's you know people that are in power become ministers yeah so unless we have a massive left-wing movement of which i will have to consider my independence if that happens yeah i'm not saying that that's i don't see a political party where i fit in right now yeah you know i'm too much of like i'm i'm very impulsive like i wouldn't last very long like they would throw me out you know they would totally throw me out because i can't i don't do what i'm told i never do what i'm told i can't just tow a party line because they need to rally in behind someone i can't do that yeah I can't. It would be a lie

and you know what? It would make me sick. Yeah. Fair fucking play to you. I'm going to take one last question because you have to get your Lewis or your Dart or whatever it is you do up here. How do I pick the right wrist?

This one right here. Yes, there you go. What's the crack? It's probably not as intellectual as all the other questions. Oh, stop. You're great. So you said that about carrying the problem down generations. So coming from a family that both sides have addiction in uh how do i stop that carrying forward and how do i know that i'm doing the right thing yeah it's a huge question yeah i think it would uh it's such a big question.

And for me, it was less about addiction and more about trauma. So more about how the family reacts to a particular situation. So usually it's the environment that's created because of a particular thing that has the biggest impact. You know, and addiction for me doesn't necessarily carry carry down at all like I mean if behaviors within a family are a particular way um and things become normalized that can have an impact environment can have an impact um but I don't think it would be very fair of me to apply some sort of generalised situation to your

situation. My parents, I have no addiction in my family, but I can tell you, I struggle every day not to just knock myself out into oblivion. So it's not necessarily that it's handed down. For me within my family, it was how I responded to trauma so it was actually my behavior so whether it was addiction or whether it was the fact that I was sexually assaulted whether it was the fact that I experienced just so much you know pain in my community it was actually the fact that I carried myself in such a venomous way actually growing up I was I was you know you you knew when I walked into a room and your children or your family shouldn't have to reassert themselves based on what mood you're walking into a room and that's what I brought in. So it wasn't necessarily my addiction or it wasn't necessarily anything else other than the fact that

I was carrying a massive amount of pain and I just vomited that on everyone else and that is what had the impact for me. So I don't think necessarily addiction has to have some sort of lineage at all. Look, all I can say, Lynn, is it was a fucking serious, serious privilege to have you on here and to have you speak. And I love listening to every fucking word you said. The sense that you're talking, the learning that I did tonight,

I truly gobsmacked. And it was a fucking privilege, wasn't it? And... APPLAUSE Honest to God, lads, if you did go to Trinity College And... Honest to God, lads, if you did go to Trinity College and you hear about... I'm serious. If you hear about Lynn looking for re-election and you went to Trinity College and you've got a friend who did,

for the love of fuck, she's a good person who's doing something from her fucking heart and that's rare in this country. So please... ..do the right thing there. Thank you so much to all of you. I love coming here to Vicar Street. You were absolutely fucking sound. Fantastic audience. Perfect night. That sounded like Donald Trump. But no, seriously, thanks so much, lads. It was fantastic. Best of luck.