By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor – Irish Mail on Sunday
The young doctor, whose ‘Leo always delivers’ WhatsApp message put him at the centre of a political storm earlier this week was unusually silent as the Tánaiste was forced to apologise for leaking details of a confidential GP contract.
But a flair for publicity, politics and controversy has been a prominent characteristic of the Ó Tuathail family, long before Maitiú was born in 1988.
Dr Ó Tuathail’s political manoeuvres with Leo Varadkar may have been the focus of attention this week, but even before the Leo Leak scandal, the ambitious young GP had already made a name for himself since becoming president of the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) in 2018 aged 29 and still a trainee.
Dr Ó Tuathail is not the first in the O’Toole clan to make the news, nor is he the first to have employed unorthodox tactics.
At the age of 28, Dr Ó Tuathail’s father Peadar – a publican and shopkeeper in the Murvagh Island village of Lettermore in Galway – launched a successful political career from a cell in Dublin’s Mountjoy jail in 1984.
Adept at networking and showboating The seven-day sentence was one of three jail terms that Peter O’Toole – as he is also known – was given in the 1980s for refusing, on principle, to pay road tax.
As chairman of a Gaeltacht Civil Rights Group called Cumhacht (Power), Peadar rose to prominence leading a headline-grabbing campaign to have rural roads improved.
The first jail sentence saw him elected to the board of Údarás na Gaeltachta. The fine, meanwhile, was paid in secret by an unknown person.
‘It shows how far we in Cumhacht are willing to go to further our cause,’ Peadar told reporters at the time.
Trade unionist Joe O’Toole, who would rise to become an independent Senator and chairman of the Government’s Expert Water Commission, described the sentence as ‘an immoral abuse of the prison system’. Joe O’Toole is a cousin of Dr Ó Tuathail.
Subsequent jail terms saw Peadar elected and retained as a councillor on Galway County Council as protesters occupied the council chamber and held placards outside Cork Prison.
From there, Peadar rose to become council chairman in 1994, was instituted as a member of the local health board, was appointed to the government’s Western Development Commission in 1997 and became a prominent member of the Western Regional Authority.
He remained a persistent thorn in the side, insisting that council meetings be held in Irish, berating fellow Údarás members for junketeering abroad while there were no funds to support communities at home and criticising his own health board as patients on waiting lists died.
It was amidst this mix of conscientious and creative politics that young Maitiú Ó Tuathail was raised by Peadar and his French mother, Muriel, in the same rural pub, shop and post office his grandfather Plunkett had run, with his wife Lena, a generation before.
The pub – Tigh Plunkett – has seen headlines come and go. In the early 1970s, it made national headlines when the local post office – formerly controlled by a nearby family – was moved to the Ó Tuathail premises.
The resulting division within the community saw phone lines and poles ripped down by those opposed to the move while protesters prevented An Post employees from crossing the bridge from the mainland to repair the lines.
In 1993, an excited five-year-old Maitiú Ó Tuathail would have watched as photographers flocked Family pub has seen headlines come and go to capture the sight of local Lotto winner Máire Burke arriving by helicopter to Tigh Plunkett with an £3m Lotto cheque.
This week though, the story of Maitiú and his relationship with the Tánaiste is what’s on everyone’s lips on the island.
Like his father, Dr Ó Tuathail has proven adept at networking and showboating. Thanks to Twitter, his coronavirus advice videos have earned prominence far from these shores.
Both father and son remain dedicated to their Gaeltacht roots and they have both demonstrated a deep-seated desire to help their community.
Dr Ó Tuathail has made no secret of his ambition to one day take the place of Lettermore’s resident GP, Dr Edward Harty, the man who inspired him to become a doctor.
Currently based in a surgery in Ranelagh, Dublin, he has contributed to several charities working with the marginalised.
At the start of the pandemic, Ó Tuathail became a director of – and a medical adviser to – Heroes Aid, which provides support and PPE to frontline workers and has helped distribute PPE donated by mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor.
Dr Ó Tuathail has also worked throughout the country with refugee applicants in direct provision centres for the charity Safety Net Primary Care.
But his ambition may have misfired when he became NAGP President in 2018, stepping into the role as the outgoing president and five board members were resigning over concerns at financial governance that would end up on the desk of the the Director of Corporate Enforcement.
The financial concerns – which had nothing to do with Dr Ó Tuathail – saw the union collapse into liquidation in 2019.
The most concerning aspects of the Leo Leak affair appear to relate to the nature of the relationship between Ó Tuathail and Mr Varadkar. Another Ó Tuathail text – ‘Leo constantly pulling strings for me. You’ve no idea’ – does little to dampen concerns.
Ó Tuathail will have ample opportunity to elaborate if he accepts Aontú leader Peadar TóibÃn’s request for him to appear before the Oireachtas Health Committee.
And if his father is anything to go by, this won’t be the last we see of or hear from h
