Former TD, election auditor, and author of Running From Office, Eoghan Murphy sits down with Daire Lydon
When Eoghan Murphy was living in Vienna writing speeches for the head of a UN nuclear test ban organisation, he would often work through the night. One morning, finishing yet another draft for a foreign minister, a different thought hit him.
“If I was putting this amount of time and effort into politics at home,” he remembers, “think about what I could maybe achieve personally and in terms of the country.”
It was the moment the young UN official began to picture leaving a job many international relations students dream of, to roll the dice on Irish local politics during an economic crash.
His path from Star of the Sea in Sandymount to UCD, King’s College London, the UN, Cabinet and then out of Irish politics looks carefully planned. He is clear that it was not.
“There is no fixed path that says this will take you into politics,” he says. “Which is the great thing about it, because anyone can do it and everyone should do it.”
“I kind of stopped being such a nerd.”
Murphy grew up in Sandymount, went to Star of the Sea, then St Michael’s College. He started as the classic high achiever.
“I was a very good student initially when I came into Michael’s,” he says. “I never really had a problem with studying.”
That changed with Transition Year.
“The unstructured environment of Transition Year, and I guess you are kind of 15, going to discos and stuff like that,” he says. “We did a lot of voluntary work and it was a lot more interesting than schoolwork.”
He threw himself into the European Youth Parliament, the school play and St Vincent de Paul. English remained his anchor.
“I always loved English. I loved writing and I loved reading.”
UCD, no clear plan, and a gap year that clarified everything
At UCD, he chose what he enjoyed rather than a mapped career.
“I went on to UCD to do English and philosophy,” he says. “English was the core thing, but I really wanted to enjoy college life, get involved in the student paper, student radio, student theatre.”
He wrote for the University Observer and embraced campus life, but still had no sense of what came next.
“I had no clue what I wanted to do after I finished my undergrad.”
Instead of drifting into a Masters he wasn’t sure about, he took a gap year. “I decided to take a gap year and see the world, broaden my horizons, learn more.” Travelling alone, staying in hostels, he kept hearing the same conversation.
“No matter where in the world I found myself, people were talking about the war in Iraq,” he says. “UN Security Council resolutions, Hans Blix the weapons inspector. I just found it all really interesting and meaningful.”
Returning to UCD, he finally knew what he wanted.
“I was like, I want to be a diplomat. It is important stuff and I want to be part of that.” There was a problem. His early college grades “had been so shit”.
“If you want to be a diplomat, you have to get a degree in international relations in a good university,” his brother told him. “If you want to get into a good university in the UK, you have to get a first.”
So he put his head down.
It worked.
King’s College London and the pivot to disarmament
One piece of advice stayed with him.
“If you are going to do a Masters, do not do it in the same university,” he says. “Different universities think in different ways. It is more enriching.”
King’s College London, with its renowned Department of War Studies, appealed. “King’s had an excellent reputation,” he says. “And London seemed very exciting.” The shift from UCD was huge.
“You are doing a Masters course with people who have been working in the world for five or ten years.”
Between coursework he interned for an MP in Westminster. Someone had warned him that he’d never laugh or cry as much in one year. “That is exactly the experience I had.”
He arrived intending to specialise in diplomacy. A taster class changed that.
“International relations is broad. You have got to specialise,” a friend’s father had told him. Murphy initially chose Mandarin.
“I was absolutely crap at Mandarin,” he laughs.
Then he attended a seminar on weapons proliferation.
“It was absolutely fascinating,” he says. “Arms control, disarmament, all the big questions. The stuff I had been interested in around Iraq and WMD.”
He switched focus.
“I came out of King’s wanting to work in disarmament.”
Open source intelligence, Geneva and Vienna
Coming out of college with debt, he needed a job quickly. He found one with a small NGO monitoring arms control treaties through open source intelligence.
“Could we verify if someone had actually destroyed chemical weapons? Or use satellite imagery to confirm if something was happening at a North Korean test site?” he explains. “I found that incredibly exciting.”
That work took him to the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, then back to Dublin as a stagiaire in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
There he learned to write.
“I developed very good research skills and writing skills. I was writing speeches for the minister, answers to parliamentary questions. I had no idea I would ever go into politics.”
Then came Vienna and the CTBTO. One small ask changed everything.
“They asked me to look at a speech for the head of the organisation,” he says. “I added a couple of things. He loved them. Next thing, I am working in his office as his speechwriter.”
“My job was basically to write, whether it was a Christmas card to a foreign minister or a speech to the UN General Assembly. It was an incredible opportunity. I grabbed it with two hands and worked my fucking ass off.”
Harvard, New York, or home
By 2007, Murphy seemed set for an international relations career. He considered New York and the UN headquarters. He started the Harvard Kennedy School application.
“I got the application papers, the GMAT books.”
But Ireland’s economic crash was unfolding, and politics at home was on his mind.
“I remember thinking, I do not want to be a student again. I am in the world of work and enjoying it.”
His boss in Vienna gave him an unusual safety net. If he ran for office and failed, he could come back.
“So I had that security. I could give it a go.”
He did not know it would become a twelve-year political career.
Enda Kenny in a bar and how candidates really get picked
Murphy had few political connections. He just started talking to people. Then, one night in London after a rugby match, he met Enda Kenny in a bar.
“My brother marched me up to him,” he says. “Enda gave me his phone number and said, call me next time you are in Dublin. He was brilliant. He said, just go for it. We need young people.”
When he began speaking to Fine Gael, he learned what they valued.
“When I talked about my foreign policy experience, no one gave a shit,” he says. “But when I talked about my mum being in the local tennis club, my brother being in the local football club, that is when Fine Gael got interested.”
“They gave me a shot,” he says. “You do not get a tonne of money or a team. You have to build that yourself.”
Advice to young people: “You will live the wrong life”
Asked what he would tell someone considering politics, he thinks of UCD.
“I was never involved politically in college,” he says. “People were so certain of their worldviews at 18 or 19. They had not even lived yet.”
He remembers people saying they could not be photographed with a cigarette because they wanted to be TDs.
“I do not think any of them became politicians.”
His point: “There is no fixed path into politics. You do not have to study politics. There is no set of experiences that will make you better or worse.”
But there is one danger.
“If you live your life so deliberately because you think you are going to go into politics, you are going to live the wrong life,” he says. “You might never go into politics and you will have regrets.”
Being Irish abroad: trusted and few
In Geneva and Vienna, he saw how Irish officials were viewed.
“The Irish pop up everywhere,” he says. “My impression was they were always well regarded. Fewer in number, but doing good and important work.”
Back then, Ireland was trusted.
“You were not a former colonial power. You were not seen as a rich European country in the way we are today. There was a kind of trust.”
Getting in, however, was hard.
“These places are difficult to get into. Massive bureaucracies. Long hiring processes.” His way in was specialisation.
“If you get very involved in a specific area like nuclear weapons, you can find yourself in the right internship programme. Specialising was the quickest route.”
Leaving politics and writing it down
Murphy left Irish politics in 2020 and returned to international work, this time in election observation.
“I go to other countries and audit their elections,” he says. “You work every day for months. Then you need time to decompress.”
Between missions, he began writing his book.
“I was trying to understand my career. What were the right lessons, what were the wrong lessons? Stepping back, I did not view it as a success.”
Friends in London told him people needed to hear that side of politics.
“So I thought there would be use in writing it honestly. For myself, and for people who might want to go into politics.”
His book is intentionally unglamorous.
“If you read my book and you do not want to go into politics, maybe it was not for you,” he says. “If you still want to, good. Now you have a guide as to what not to do.”
What he is proud of, and why he has no ten year plan
When he looks back, he is most proud of the people involved in his campaigns.
“People who were not involved in politics and then stayed involved after I left. That is amazing.”
He also names Leo Varadkar’s leadership campaign.
“We felt we were really changing the country with that campaign.”
He is proud of his book, and of his current work.
“The election work I do now is fantastic,” he says. “The people I work with are brilliant. They are idealists from every walk of life.”
He does not have a ten year plan. “You never know what life is going to present,” he says. “Most of the time, it will not go your way. That is the challenge, how you navigate it.”
What he does know is this: “There is no right way into politics. There is your way, if you follow your interests, specialise when it matters, take a chance when the ball bounces your way, and learn from what happens when it does not.”