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Seamus Heaney told us “If we can winter here, we can summer anywhere”, but when young men would rather winter in Melbourne than spend time with their family at Christmas, one might begin to worry whose hands we’re leaving this country in.

Where are the men of resilience, of sheer refusal to quit? The men who took public disgrace not as a cue to retreat but as a call to assert themselves further? I’ll tell you where one is: he’s sitting in the Dáil showing the youngsters how it’s done.

Michael Lowry is a man of many fingers and many pies. He brought refrigeration to Tipperary in 1988 with Streamline Enterprises, and went on to found 3 more successful firms: Garuda Ltd, Abbeygreen Consulting and Glebeland Farm.

On top of all this he’s achieved an illustrious career in politics culminating in appointment as Minister for Transport, Energy, and Communications for Fine Gael in 1994, before deciding to continue to represent the people of Tipperary as an independent TD going forward.

Much of his well-earned fortune he can attribute to years of horse trading… but enough about his political career! Ah no, seriously though, he’s made a lot of money inseminating horses.

This is a someone who has managed to succeed independently in the brutal and unassociated arenas of both business and politics, and his return to the Dáil in 2024 is a beacon of hope in a lost age.

The shortcomings of the encroaching generation are well understood. They’re flippant, transient, dopamine-addicted, indolent, entitled, garish and needy. They’d rather cancel each other over “inappropriate behaviour” than develop any semblance of grit, or what author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “anti-fragility”.

In his words, Lowry could be considered an agent that gains from disorder. Unlike many of his counterparts, who’d retreat to their safe spaces at the merest hint of scrutiny, Lowry thrives in the face of it. The tribunals, the tax investigations, the media circus; these would be career-ending catastrophes for most politicians. For Lowry, they’re opportunities to demonstrate remarkable adaptability.

When the Moriarty Tribunal published its conclusions, did we find him whimpering about unfairness? Did he post a tearful apology video on Instagram? Absolutely not. He recalibrated his strategy and carried on, winning his seat in Tipperary with remarkable consistency.

This is what Taleb means when he speaks of systems that don’t just survive chaos but actively benefit from it. With each controversy, Lowry emerges not diminished but actively enhanced, his political capital appreciating precisely because of the volatility surrounding him. His constituents don’t see corruption; they see a man capable of navigating complex terrain, a valuable skill in our increasingly uncertain world.

This is what separates the men from the boys in Irish politics. When faced with allegations about payments linked to Denis O’Brien’s companies, did Lowry retreat to a wellness centre to “process his feelings”? Did he start journaling about his “trauma”? No. He doubled down, maintained his innocence, and let his electoral success speak for itself. The tribunal findings were merely another variable in his game of quantum political calculus.

The people of Tipperary understand something that escapes the men of today: results matter more than reputation. While Lowry’s detractors in Dublin media circles cluck their tongues and clutch their pearls, his constituents continue to benefit from his unmatched ability to deliver for his constituency. The hospital beds secured, the roads repaired, the grants generously allocated. These tangible achievements outweigh any abstract concerns about propriety. As long as he looks after the people of Tipperary, democratic norms and antiquated parliamentary procedure can continue to fall by the wayside.

This is precisely the kind of practical wisdom that our business schools and political science departments fail to teach. They’re too busy instructing students on inclusive mental health and microaggression avoidance to impart the real lessons of political survival.

At a time when Ireland’s political landscape is increasingly dominated by sanitised, media-trained personalities who’ve never known true adversity, Lowry stands as a monument to an older, more resilient approach. He is living proof that what doesn’t kill a political career makes it stronger, particularly when you refuse to acknowledge that it even scratched you.

So before we dismiss Lowry as a relic of a bygone political era, we should recognise the invaluable lesson he offers our spineless youth. Men like him are connected, resilient, and gloriously unburdened by conventional shame. Lowry stands as testament to the power of brazen perseverance. His network of relationships, carefully cultivated over decades, provides an immunity to scandal that today’s trembling, low-testosterone political aspirants could only dream of possessing. Men like Lowry don’t merely survive in an ecosystem, they define it. And in a world increasingly governed by shrill voices of outrage merchants, wasting precious parliamentary time complaining about how unfair it is that they were born a loser, isn’t his unshakeable pragmatism precisely the antidote Ireland needs? After all, a country gets exactly the politicians it deserves. Thankfully for us, we still deserve Michael Lowry.