“Did you know we’re the smallest parish in Wexford,” said Frank Whelan. “There’s only 80 children in the national school, and we’re hard pressed to fill out underage GAA teams”.

He was talking to me in Clongeen parish hall last Tuesday evening (15 November). It's is a credit to the community; an old national school transformed into a hall with excellent sound and lighting facilities.

The Ballycogley Players had been on stage two nights earlier. That was comedy, but last Tuesday was more tragedy, with the potential for farce.

We were there for a public meeting to discuss the community to discuss what to do about the damage wreaked in the area by a mini-tornado. Two weeks on from that freak occurrence, the shock at the ferocity of the event, and the relief that no one was seriously injured, has given way to frustration and anger that there is no relief on the way.

As people relayed the extent of the damage to their houses and farmyards, they regularly highlighted that the story had been ignored nationally.

As one farmer said to me: “If a trampoline blew over in south Dublin, it would be on the Six One news. Our houses and sheds have blown down, and nobody bothered to come and report on it.”

The local paper and South East Radio have majored on the story, but national media bar this paper gave it little or no coverage.

Portent of weather to come?

And it was a terrifying occurrence. A wind circling down a narrow corridor, destorying everything in its path.

It travelled as such speed that birds couldn’t escape its vortex. Crows and pigeon lay scattered in fields among the tangled galvinised sheets and twisted trees, blown up to 100 metres from their roots.

We don’t expect such extreme weather events in Ireland. It was classified as a “weak tornado” by Met Éireann. They said a handful happen every year.

Some of the damage on John Stafford's farm. \ Philip Doyle

However, this was the worst in terms of damage, so maybe they are increasing in destructive power.

TD Verona Murphy thinks we need a disaster agency, like FEMA in the United States.

She told me after the meeting that while there has been a lot of focus on how we combat climate change, no plans are in place to cope with its implications.

The rain was lashing down as she spoke, but it was still unseasonably mild for mid-November. Climate change is bringing more extreme weather patterns, and rural communities are feeling the effects.

There was flooding across south Wexford last Christmas, taking out bridges and destroying crops.

Drought affected the coastal region of the county this summer; that’s becoming a regular occurrence.

Isolated and politically exiled

Clongeen is a proud community. In 2007, the little parish won the county football title.

The manager, a Waterford man named Jason Ryan, then took over the county footballers.

With three of the Clongeen lads on board, he brought Wexford to an All-Ireland semi-final the following year.

But it’s a community that feels forgotten.

Clongeen is slap bang in the middle of south Wexford. It’s about 10km from the Wexford-New Ross road, the N25. That road is Wexford’s version of the “Mason-Dixon” line. It’s very rural, and most of the roads into and around Clongeen are narrow and twisty.

And the people of Clongeen feel cut off and unrepresented, victims of re-districting, Irish style.

The traditional four districts of Wexford (Gorey, Enniscorthy, New Ross, Wexford) were revamped in 2018.

Two new districts were created - Kilmuckridge, in the middle-east of the county (if you know what I mean) and Rosslare, in the south east.

Clongeen, only 20km from New Ross, and very much part of the New Ross district, found itself in the Rosslare district.

Rosslare is almost 40km away, in the very southeast corner of the country, where ferries leave for France and Wales.

Clongeen people don’t feel connected. As one person said to me last Tuesday: “We’re the definition of the hind tit over here”.

Another told me she was closer to Waterford city than Wexford town.

The map clearly shows how Clongeen’s natural home should be New Ross.

All across the country

The sense of isolation that Clongeen has exists in communities all over Ireland.

The people of southwest Wexford feel cut off from the “commuter belt” of Dublin that has brought people and prosperity to Gorey at the other end of the county.

Similarly, the people of south Kerry and west Cork, 250km west of Clongeen, feel isolated and ignored.

You’re a long way from Cork city in Bantry, but it’s as long a journey in the other direction to get to Castletownbere, which itself is only halfway down the Beara peninsula.

Across Kenmare Bay, people feel just as cut off. The first leg of the journey from Caherdaniel to Dublin, to bring you to Macroom, hardly took Daniel O’Connell longer on horseback than it does today.

Despite the rich history of Caherdaniel, it doesn’t have the cachet or influx of tourists that Killarney get. Bus tours are more likely to head down the Dingle peninsula.

The people of rural Tipperary, in places like the Glen of Aherlow in the shadow of the Galtee mountains, or in Upperchurch, close enough to Thurles, but uphill and quickly remote, feel similarly disconnected.

Is it any surprise that such areas are electing independent TDs who share and articulate that sense of being “left behind”.

Michael Healy-Rae.

Michael and Danny Healy Rae speak of and for south Kerry from their base of Kilgarvan, a small village 10km inland from Kenmare, the town at the meeting-point of the Beara and Iveragh peninsulas.

Michael Collins has established himself as the west Cork equivalent.

Mattie McGrath represents the people of Tipperary, but there is no doubt he draws strong support from the more rural and isolated communities.

And in South Wexford, Verona Murphy has emerged as an independent TD, as independent as they come.

Wexford TD Verona Murphy. \ Ferdia Mooney

Unlike the others I mentioned, she didn’t fall out of and with Fianna Fáil to go it alone. Rather, her political life began in Fine Gael, as a candidate in the byelection caused by Mick Wallace’s election to the European parliament.

A former trucker, who was the president of the Road Hauliers Association, she expressed some views that cost her electorally, and which led Fine Gael to drop her.

She ran as an independent, and was seventh at the end of the first count.

Four sitting TDs, two each from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, were immediately ahead of her.

She quickly overhauled three of them, and was comfortably elected, picking up transfers from absolutely everywhere.

The Rural Independents are seen in many quarters as Irish hillbillies, an embarrassment.

It’s easy to draw comparisons with Brexiteer Tory MPs or MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans in the US - socially very conservative, harking back to a pastoral utopia that never existed in the first place.

And there is truth in the social conservatism; across the TDs I’ve mentioned and also Richard Donohoe from Limerick, Carol Nolan in Laois-Offaly and Peadar Toibín in Meath.

The latter two left Sinn Féin over dfferences on social issues.

TD Michael Fitzmaurice. \ David Ruffles

Then you have Michael Fitzmaurice and Denis Naughten in Galway-Roscommon, and Sean Canney in Galway itself, where turf is a burning issue (sorry), and cattle farming is an identity as much as a business.

Many of these TDs have expressed outright opposition to the Government’s plans for rural Ireland in terms of transport, housing, and especially farming.

And so they have been branded as climate deniers. And some of them are (take a bow Danny Healy Rae).

But there is a range of views on climate change among the independent TDs, and a range of views on how we proceed. Broad strokes by the commentariat miss that.

And then you have someone like Marian Harkin, who shares some of the perspective of other rural independents, but is not seen as backward or bumpkin.

Marian Harkin.

And I know we all ultimately earn our reputation, but perhaps the stereotyping of rural independents both reveals a source of their popularity and conceals or misses other aspects of why 19 TDs that can be identified as rural independents are sitting in Dáil Éireann.

There is a hypocrisy abroad in how we look at representatives of areas that feel forgotten and left behind.

Danny Healy-Rae.

There was universal respect for Tony Gregory for putting the needs of his constituents in inner-city Dublin first.

He did a deal with Fianna Fáil in 1982, and supported a Government that was socially very conservative, even as Irish society was becoming more progressive.

While there were some questions as to how a socialist could support a conservative party in government, Gregory himself was utterly unapologetic.

For him, it was about putting bread on the table and structural finding into an area suffering from deprivation and being decimated by heroin.

The same applies today.

Bríd Smyth is unapologetically agitating for the needs of the people of Ballyfermot, Crumlin, Drimnagh and Walkinstown.

Clare Daly, Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy are taken seriously when they talk about the needs of the working-class people of Dublin. Ditto Mick Barry in Cork.

But when Michael Fitzmaurice or Michael Healy Rae speak about rural isolation and deprivation among small communities, there seems to be an eyebrow raised in response saying: “Really?”

Water charges

When the water charges debate was in full swing, the Government parties who supported the imposition of water charges fought the advocacy of Joe Higgins, Paul Murphy et al on a number of grounds.

However, the fact that the removal of water charges created a two-tier Ireland, where water is free in the towns and cities, but country people have to pay for it through group water schemes or private wells, never really registered or featured.

For rural communities, it felt like Ballsbridge arguing with Ballyfermot, Montenotte versus Mayfield, while country people watched on bemused but not amused.

Scepticism about how genuine the rural independents are has only increased their popularity. Very few of them are in any electoral danger.

And, with little coverage, they are pushing on issues outside the realm of “pro-life/anti-sectoral targets for carbon reduction”.

On Thursday, the Dáil heard the second reading of the Impaired Farm Credit bill, sponsored by the Rural Independent grouping.

It is designed to protect family farms with loans that are in the hands of the vulture funds, offering legal safeguards against a forced sale and access to low-interest loans.

They also sponsored a motion to limit the price wind energy producers can charge for electricity, which was passed this week with cross-party support.

There are large pockets of people who for years felt unseen and unrepresented.

While some Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs are still socially conservative, most are classically centrist in their outlook.

And the rise of the Rural Independents is in part linked to issues like reproductive rights and civil partnerships.

But it’s much more than that.

When Verona Murphy stood up in the meeting in Clongeen and talked of how the Government doesn’t care about small communities like those in Clongeen, it resonated.

She was the only TD in the room, although Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour county councillors were all present and supportive.

The Dáil was in session on Tuesday, but Verona had trekked down from Dublin for the meeting.

The county council met the five Wexford TDs on Friday in a meeting that was pre-scheduled, an event that occurs a couple of times every year.

And a delegation from Clongeen was invited by the chair George Lawlor.

He was top-table in Clongeen on Tuesday evening, along with his predecessor, Fianna Fáil councillor Michael Sheehan.

The Clongeen delegation presented each TD with documents, photographs and video footage highlighting the extent of the damage and the need for disaster relief. The message is filtering up the line.

I am aware that the Government is aware of the need to help the people of Clongeen and Foulksmills whose sheds have been destroyed, whose houses have damaged roofs and almost certainly structural damage.

But even if aid comes from Government, many of the people of south Wexford have come to regard Verona Murphy as their advocate.

They don’t all share her worldview, but she is one of their own.

They believe she understands them, and is unfettered by any party whip from speaking her mind.