Holly Cairns is losing patience with the “nonsense” in Leinster House.

The 36-year-old Cork Southwest TD had her first baby on the day of the 2024 general election, finished maternity leave and returned to her role as leader of the Social Democrats in September. Motherhood hasn’t changed her political lens, as she was always alive to issues such as childcare.

“But what I feel is quite different for me now is I have even less patience for some of the nonsense in here,” she says in her Kildare Street office, as the division bell for the Dáil rings in the background, signalling a vote.

Returning to work has been “very logistically difficult” and felt like an “insurmountable thing”, she says. Commuting from her Cork Southwest constituency takes more than four hours.

“It’s five hours if you stop, and there’s a lot more stops with a baby,” she says.

Cairns says she could not leave her baby at home three days a week, but she could not bring her up and down within the same day either.

“We’re often here till after childcare hours,” she says. “Not that we can get a creche place anywhere.”

For now, Cairns’s partner, Barry Looney, accompanies her and their baby to make her job “possible and workable”.

It’s an arrangement the family can manage for now, but it won’t be sustainable in the longer term. “He can’t do that forever with his work,” she says.

She invests much to get to her own work at Leinster House, often with little gain in return.

“You come in, you put in all of this time and everything to get here, to be here and then you ask a question, and you don’t get an answer,” Cairns says.

“I feel like my focus is more laser. I have less patience for that kind of nonsense.