A man in Dublin recalls an unexpected encounter with local politics done the Healy-Rae way.
He has no personal links with Co Kerry but was next of kin to an elderly relative who had loose connections with the county in the distant past and had long since left.
When the relative died a short while ago, the man was surprised to receive a bereavement pack in the post. This included a note, a card and a yellow bookmark with a message of sympathy and a syrupy poem on the sorrow of death: “Gradually, you will learn acquaintance with the invisible form of your departed; And when the work of grief is done, The wound of loss will heal.”
At the bottom of the bookmark was the name of Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae, together with his constituency and Leinster House phone numbers and Oireachtas email.
If attending funerals is part of the stock-in-trade of a TD’s life, the Kerry politician’s grief bookmark brings this to a new level.
“They have this down to a fine art,” said the recipient, noting how he was an outsider in Kerry and that it would have taken some effort to identify him as next of kin and find his home address.
“The thing that took my breath away was the bookmark, and the effortless assumption of familiarity.”
Welcome to the singular world of the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for Forestry, Farm Safety and Horticulture.
Fellow Minister of State Timmy Dooley of Fianna Fáil, whose office is two doors down from Healy-Rae, said his colleague has taken to the job with enthusiasm.
“I have known him a long time. But seeing him up close, he’s an early riser like myself; he’s regularly in the office before 7am and regularly among the last to leave.”
Still, he is not a man to allow Government business to obscure his work back home.
“They know how the planning system works. They know the health system. If you’re travelling and your passport is out of date, they know what to do. And they have contacts everywhere,” said a Kerryman who knows Healy-Rae well.
Healy-Rae (59) has the benefit of being transported by State drivers these days but he was long reputed to notch up 120,000km on the road each year, between the long drive to Leinster House and unrelenting Kerry groundwork. He is on the road again for St Patrick’s Day but is heading further afield, visiting Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of the annual Government diplomatic drive for the national day.
The bookmark sent by Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae to a relative of a person with a Kerry connection who died. The bookmark came as part of a bereavement pack that also included a note and a card
Healy-Rae is in the news after the latest Dáil register of members’ interest drew attention to his huge property portfolio and a big State contract to accommodate Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. He also draws income from Kerry County Council’s rental accommodation and housing assistance payment scheme.
The cap-wearing landlord minister is a very rich man – and widely reputed to be the wealthiest TD in the Dáil. If he isn’t, he has never said so.
He declared 14 houses for letting in Co Kerry, in addition to three guest houses, one rented commercial unit, a vacant premises and a single apartment for letting. There was an unquantified number of “apartments for letting” in another development and an unquantified number of “rooms for letting” elsewhere. Student accommodation for letting in Limerick was declared but not the actual amount.
Rough calculations based on Eircode property transaction data for 2025 – collated by the Central Statistics Office – suggest Healy-Rae’s rental housing and guest house properties could have a market value of some €5.6 million. The actual figure may well be more than that – or indeed less – as estimates are based on median price data that take no account of the size, location or condition of the property in question.
With housing in short supply, residential rents in Kerry are strong and rising fast. Recent figures from property website Daft.ie suggest the listed monthly rents on two-bedroom apartments in the county rose 7.5 per cent last year to €1,354, with listed rents on two-bedroom houses rising 7.3 per cent to €1,310 and listed rents on four-bedroom houses rising 8.8 per cent to €1,879.
Such income is subject to tax but 14 Kerry two-bedroom houses would bring in €18,340 per month at current market rents – or €220,080 per year.
For all that, Kerry estate agent Johnny Greene of Property Partners Gallivan said Co Kerry landlords were leaving the market because of laws that came into force this month which cap rental increases on new tenancies.
[ Healy-Rae urges ‘serious rethink’ of planned short-term lets crackdownOpens in new window ]
“Seven of the last 10 sales have been landlords exiting. They fear further Government intervention,” Greene said this week in his Killarney office.
Far from leaving the market, Healy-Rae has only added to his property over the years.
Aged 44, when he first won a Dáil seat in what then was the Kerry South constituency in the 2011 election, he was already the owner of 14 properties.
An examination of successive Dáil registers shows he declared 16 properties in 2016, 19 in 2018, 21 in 2020, 24 in 2022 and a grand total 28 for 2025, including his family home.
“He’s a landlord since he was 18 years of age; that’s the way he started out,” said Independent Kerry councillor Liam “Speedy” Nolan, a north Kerry publican who is allied politically with the Minister of State and his family.
“He doesn’t put himself out like a man with a lot of money. He just works hard. He never goes to bed the same day he gets up.”
But Healy-Rae’s interests as a landlord tell only part of the story.
In 2024, his company Roughty Properties received some €470,000 from the Department of Children for Ukrainian accommodation. The payments were made month by month, €49,640 in March, €52,080 in April and so forth.
This is in addition to his business as postmaster and owner of a Mace convenience store, Maxol filling station and car wash in Kilgarvan, the picturesque rural village in southeast Kerry that is his political heartland. Not far from the Co Cork border, Kilgarvan is about 31km by road from Killarney.
His properties in the village include 100 acres of farmland and forestry, although no distinction is drawn between the two in the Dáil register. He owns another 42 acres of forestry and another four acres of farmland elsewhere in Kilgarvan.
The most recent assessment by auctioneers Sherry FitzGerald suggests farmland in the southwest region has an average valuation of €14,125 per acre. This puts a potential valuation of €1.46 million on Healy-Rae’s farmland, assuming minimal forestry in the 100 acres.
The most recent Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers data puts a €6,960 value per acre on Munster forestry, suggesting the 40-acre plot could be worth about €278,000.
Michael Healy-Rae: The Minister of State at his forestry near Kilgarvan, Co Kerry, last year. Photograph: Don MacMonagle
Public records show these interests have been accumulated without any of the four companies in which Healy-Rae is a director – Roughty Properties, Black Cap & Co, ML Healy-Rae Properties and Roughty Plant Hire – ever drawing down a mortgage.
Any personal mortgages are another matter but the Minister of State is not for discussing his personal interests.
“He doesn’t comment on his private business,” said son Jackie Healy-Rae, his official press adviser and himself an Independent member of Kerry County Council.
“He won’t be commenting on his register of interests. The register is the register.”
Michael Healy-Rae, who secured almost 18,600 first-preference votes in the last election in the Kerry constituency, is the figurehead in a powerful political dynasty that has travelled far beyond its Kilgarvan origins. His personal vote was the second-highest in the election, behind Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin in Co Donegal. His brother Danny Healy-Rae is TD in the same Kerry constituency, receiving more than 8,000 first-preference votes.
Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae. Photo: Alan Betson
Detailed election maps circulated to the supporters of the brothers show they carve up the sizeable county between them, setting out how people should cast their vote in 60 named areas.
“If you support us please cast your vote in accordance with your location shown in this map,” the guide says.
[ 50 years of the Healy-Rae dynasty: Flat caps, populist politics and hard workOpens in new window ]
People in larger northern and southern parts of Kerry were urged to give Michael their first-preference vote, while those in a smaller eastern area were urged to give their first preference to Danny. Only Kilgarvan supporters were encouraged to vote Healy-Rae in order of their personal choice.
The brothers are the sons of the late Jackie-Healy Rae, the former Fianna Fáil stalwart who went Independent after failing to secure the party nomination to contest the 1997 election. He won the seat and went on to prop up two Bertie Ahern-led Fianna Fáil governments, making a big name for himself for the all-important constituency concessions extracted from the then taoiseach as well as for his trademark cap and wily turn of phrase.
The Healy-Rae TD brothers in action in Dáil Eireann. File photograph: Dáil Éireann TV
Rival South Kerry candidates in 1997 included Aidan O’Connor, a journalist then aged 23 who unsuccessfully ran for Fine Gael.
O’Connor tells of attending a party meeting in a remote location late one Saturday in the middle of the campaign. Word soon came through that he should dash to Killarney because his rival Jackie Healy-Rae, then well into his 60s, was holding court with gumption in a local nightclub with microphone in hand.
“He knew there were votes in nightclubs and not in branch meetings of the political faithful on a Saturday night,” said O’Connor, now chief reporter with Kerry’s Eye.
The knack for campaigning has been picked up by a new generation – and close family supporters. Another two Independent councillors are affiliated with the Healy-Raes, Sam Locke and “Speedy” Nolan.
In addition to the younger Jackie Healy-Rae’s council membership, Danny’s son Johnny Healy-Rae is a councillor and so too is his daughter Maura Healy-Rae.
One of the Healy-Rae businesses in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry. Photograph: Anne Lucey
Johnny Healy-Rae is now the main figure in Healy Rae Plant Hire. Company net assets were worth €4.6 million at the end of 2024, the year Danny turned 70 and stepped down as director from its board.
Public records show this business received €501,000 for work for Kerry County Council in 2025 and €384,000 in 2024. In the same two years it received €334,135 for work for Cork County Council.
Kilgarvan was quiet one morning this week, with no pedestrians and little but the sound of a Healy-Rae Plant Hire truck rumbling through the village.
Trade has been going on here for centuries: Ó Súilleabháin’s pub in the village traces roots on the site to Jack Rogers in 1774. The original family name is Healy, the Rae derived from a local townland when it was a common practice to distinguish families in that way.
The Jackie Healy-Rae Bar, run by Danny and his family, dominates Main Street, with a large sign over the premises “wishing the Kerry team best of luck”.
A photo of Danny bears the legend: “I’m on your side.”
Family business: Danny Healy-Rae at the family’s bar in Kilgarvan. File ohotograph: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/NYT
Around the corner is Michael’s shop and filling station, with a large poster of the TD beside it citing “hard work, experience, common sense”.
Known as shrewd and canny political operators, who see politics as a service, the Healy-Raes now have strength in numbers in the local authority.
“They are a well-oiled machine and it works very well,” said Labour councillor Marie Moloney, leas-Cathaoirleach of the council.
She readily accepted it was difficult to be up against them.
“They are some opponents. They are an absolute powerhouse,” she said. “They have plenty of numbers and they get to cover all of the constituency.”
What is Michael Healy-Rae’s property portfolio worth?
Calculating the value of Michael Healy-Rae’s extensive property portfolio presents a challenge because the Dáil register of members’ interests lacks precision on the location and size of the real estate in question.
Still, it is possible to make a rough estimate by examining Central Statistics Office figures on recent property deals. The estimate, which excludes Healy-Rae’s commercial property and student-housing interests, points to a possible valuation of some €5.6 million on his residential and guest house portfolio.
The CSO data sets out the median price of housing sales in December in the area of each Eircode routing key. Median describes the midpoint in the range of prices recorded in the month. The routing key is made of the first three letters and digits in the Eircode.
The entirety of Healy-Rae’s property is in Co Kerry. He has several holdings in Killarney, Kilgarvan, Kenmare and Barraduff, all covered by Eircode routing key V93. The remainder in Tralee and Castleisland are covered by routing key V92.
CSO data shows the median price of V93 residential property sold in December was €332,500. The comparable figure for V92 property was €270,000.
Healy-Rae declared five residential units in Killarney, four houses and one apartment. Also declared were four houses in Kilgarvan and unquantified “apartments”. For the purposes of this estimate we take this to mean two apartments, giving a total of six Kilgarvan units. Also declared were one house in Kenmare and one in Barraduff.
All told, that makes 12 V93 units, suggesting a rough value of €3.99 million.
The Minister of State declared one rental house in Tralee and unquantified separate rental rooms in the town. Also declared were three Tralee guest houses. Leaving out the rental rooms, we take this as four Tralee residential properties. In addition, he has two houses for rent in Castleisland.
That means six V92 units, suggesting a rough value of €1.62 million.