Just Mary (9 page)

The budgets of the late 1980s were truly lethal — spending for every Department was cut back ruthlessly and relentlessly, and as I said earlier, when people talk about the cutbacks being
implemented these days, they are nothing to what happened then. And yet, Charlie Haughey’s popularity and that of Fianna Fáil continued to rise and rise. How was this possible? How did
Charlie do it?

Well, for one thing, as Taoiseach, Haughey was able to distance himself from the austerity measures. They were the cutbacks of his Ministers, not of him: somehow that was the impression which
got out and held sway. It was also true that the general population at that time were just plain glad to see
something
being done which might save the country. Everyone was tired of the
vacillation and endless feuds between Labour and Fine Gael which had dominated the four-and-half years under the previous government, and it was reassuring to see that finally, action was being
taken and decisions were being made. To have someone strong in government raised a beacon of hope for many. In spite of all that has transpired since, it is my belief that in times to come, Charlie
Haughey’s reputation will be burnished to a degree which is difficult to envisage now. Whatever else might be said, he knew how to lead, he knew how to talk, he knew how to behave in all
situations, and you always felt somehow that the country was safe in his hands. It may sound childish to put it like that now, but looking back and analysing my emotions and the zeitgeist of those
years, that is how it was.

At that stage of course, I saw Haughey as a distant kind of figure, very much removed from me. By the time I was Minister for Education, I was almost 50 years old, but I still thought of him as
a remote guy at the top. In the years that followed, sometimes I was asked, ‘Why didn’t you question where he got his money from?’ But can you honestly see me, as a rookie, a
greenhorn in the Cabinet with the great weight of responsibility that was upon me and the huge demands I had to deal with every day, saying, ‘Excuse me Mr Haughey, but how did you make your
money?’ It just wouldn’t have happened. Of course, at the time we would have heard gossip about his finances. And we knew that Haughey had a woman friend, a sweetie, who later turned
out to be Terry Keane. There wasn’t such sense of a shock when it came out.

At the time, I thought Charlie was above all a good leader. He had an air of competence about him, a stately demeanour and a confidence which meant that he was equal to any occasion: you
wouldn’t have seen him, for example, having his hair ruffled at the Council of Europe, like Enda Kenny. His wife, Maureen Haughey (the daughter of Seán Lemass), was a wonderful wife
and mother and hugely respected by the Fianna Fáil electorate. I know Charlie didn’t come out smelling of roses. Yet he did give me my first break, and in that sense, I feel that I owe
him that recognition.

Chapter
4

I
worked too hard, of course. I realise that now. As Education Minister, I was the first person into the Department every morning. There was a
lovely man at the gate and he would raise the lever to let me in and say, ‘You’re the first in again this morning, ma’am.’ Yet I loved arriving into the hushed building
every day, seeing the place beginning to come to life around me, and everyone coming in for work and knowing that I had the huge privilege of playing such a key role in leading education in
Ireland.

However, the downside for me of having such a demanding and all-consuming public role was that I constantly worried about how my family would get on without me being around as much as I would
have liked. Was I depriving my children of an essential element of their growing-up years, which would later impact upon their characters and qualities as adults and negatively affect their own
future relationships and families? Was I denying my two boys some key ingredient in their upbringing which would leave them inadequate in their later lives? It was a huge dilemma, which many
working mothers will identify with, and not one to be discounted easily. Of course you can make arrangements via home help and, if you are very lucky as I was, with the support of a strong and
loyal husband or partner — but that doesn’t take out of the equation love and worry and care and the need to nurture and to be central to your children’s lives.

When I married Enda, he was working for Hanley’s the wholesalers in Athlone. After about a year or so, he got an offer to join Jacob’s, which was regarded as one of the premier
companies in Ireland at the time. They were a Church of Ireland company, which had started as a Quaker company, and Enda was one of the first Catholic representatives to join them, which was a big
deal at the time. In the beginning, he was an all-Ireland representative and as such often had to stay away at night. I remember writing him many lovelorn letters, which I found years afterwards
when he had passed away — he had kept all those letters for all that time. I would write to him care of whichever hotel he was in staying in. He wouldn’t write, but would ring me
regularly. I used to pour my heart out to him in my letters: I was very lonely, as we were only just married. When I found the letters after his death, I read them all and I cried, thinking of all
the love we had together!

After a while, luckily, Enda got a Midlands region position with Jacob’s, which meant he was home at night, as with a regular job. It was wonderful, as he was there for the boys and was a
real hands-on dad, great for helping with homework and taking them to sports games and scouts and all the things that children do. I was always regarded as the soft parent — the ‘good
cop’, while Enda was the strict one — the ‘bad cop’. Feargal and Aengus would come to me to give out about Dad, and Dad would have to do the giving out and putting the foot
down with them.

For the years I was involved with the town council and the county council, I could manage home life very adequately: I knew my days and my working hours and they conformed to a pattern. I was
able to combine my work in local politics at this stage very satisfactorily with my teaching job, and the boys’ life in primary school, Enda’s work and my own commitments could all be
programmed together to make a satisfactory whole. I remember very well how, prior to my taking up teaching, my mother had said, ‘If you are going to go out to work, two things are important
— do not farm out your children, and do get some help at home.’ The basis of her belief in not ‘farming out’ children, i.e. relying on crèches and so on, was founded
on the conviction that children are best in their own homes with their own toys and comforters around them, in an environment that they know and love. To this day, I feel very clearly that this is
so. Now I know such a thing is not possible for many working mothers, who must bring their children out to be minded and that there are very many childminders and crèche owners who do a
wonderful job. I am merely relating here what worked best for me, not demanding or expecting that my approach should be for everyone.

I was very lucky in that early on in my working life, I made the acquaintance of a Mrs Pearl Samuels. She knocked at my door one day shortly after I had taken up my role on the Athlone Town
Council, saying, ‘You will need some help in your home now.’ We hit it off immediately and I engaged Mrs Samuels as a part-time housekeeper. This meant that when the children came in
from primary school, she was there until I came home. Enda’s shirts and my blouses, instead of being un-ironed and rumpled, were always fresh and pressed, and in a whole lot of other ways, my
life became a little easier.

When I went into national life in the early eighties, it was of course much more difficult. I can remember that I had just started on my Dáil career when Enda sat me down one night and
said, ‘Do you intend to be serious about this business? Do you intend to continue on your political path?’ I said that, yes, I did. ‘Well then,’ he replied,
‘there’s no point in you racing home every night up and down the Dublin/Athlone road.’ This is what I had been doing, driving back from Leinster House every night, so that I would
be there for the children and see something of them during the week. Enda continued, ‘It is better for you to stay in Dublin. I can be Mum and Dad during the week and then when you come home,
you can be Mum again.’ I knew it was good advice and we had a full discussion about it. From then on, we agreed that I should stay in Dublin on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights and come
home on Thursdays for the weekends. It was easier said than done, of course, in many ways.

In the beginning, I would stay in Buswells Hotel, which was very handy for work: you would land in the Dáil yard, take your hangers and bag out of the car and then go over to book in for
the night, and you were all set. At night, however, I got very lonely for Enda and the boys. I could have gone down and sat in the bar, but then I was shy enough about doing such a thing on my own
— not now, though. So I would usually just stay late at work. There were four or five of
TDS
I was particularly friendly with, and I was on good terms with many of the
others too.

All the while, Enda provided the steady hand at home and he was the rock to whom we all looked. He and I never had a formal division of labour, so to speak. He knew what I was doing with the
children and I knew what he was doing with the children, and in that way we ruled out any reference to any of the developmental child parenting books which had begun to emerge at that time. We
managed to forge our way ahead together without them. All the time I was always conscious — again I may seem to be preaching, but I need to say it — that children need a huge amount of
love at all stages of their life, into adulthood and beyond. When they are adults, they usually look to someone else to provide that love and reassurance at a certain point, but whilst they are
growing and maturing, there can never be enough love and the open
expression
of love between a mother, a father and their family. It needs to be said and done and affirmed and reaffirmed
often.

A very interesting development occurred when Aengus was about 14. He went through what I might call a ‘bold’ phase in his teenage years, wanting to go to discos and staying out a
bit, although in a basically harmless way, and at this point, he and Enda were at a particularly spiky stage with each other — you know lads and their dads. I feared that my leaving them to
go to Dublin might exacerbate the situation, and that they wouldn’t get on at all. But quite the opposite happened! I started to notice when I would come home that the two of them were like
allies-in-arms and had become really friendly and matey in my absence. I would have cooked food for them for when I was away, leaving chickens and so on in the fridge for them — but I
realised that nothing was being eaten. So one night when I came back from Dublin, I said to Aengus, ‘So what were ye doing?’ At that point, he told me, ‘We actually go out to the
Chinese every night you are away, Mum — but Dad told me not to tell you!’ In fact, Ken So and his wife Suzie, who owned the Chinese restaurant in question, were to become very good
friends of ours over the years, and particularly of Enda. Their delicious food and great company brightened up many a lonely evening for him whenever I was in Dublin or further afield for work!

So my fears about Enda and Aengus falling out in my absence vanished, but there was the ever-present quandary in my mind — was I in fact doing harm to my children and to their childhood? I
feel that many women, not just in politics, but indeed in any job that entails being out of the home for a considerable period each day, must share these thoughts and difficulties. In the end, it
is up to each individual woman to sort out the bumps and hollows according to their own needs and means. For me, Mrs Samuels, even for a few hours a day, was an essential part of managing our
family life. So much so, in fact, that she stayed with us for years after the children had grown up and gone away to their young adult lives — and she sadly passed away while still working
for us. The boys grew very fond of her and always called her ‘Mrs S.’. God Bless you, Mrs S. and all the many other people like you all over the country who help to oil the wheels of
family life! When I read profile pieces on such and such a woman who has made it to the top or who is in a very stressful, demanding job and I see that she has young children, I find myself hoping
that she is making it in every sense of the word and that she has worked her own way satisfactorily through her dilemma.

Of course I did my best at all times to be there for my sons as much as I could. I remember clearly one incident with Feargal around 1982, when he had just embarked on his career at
UCD
to study for a
B
.
COMM
. He had a steady girlfriend in Athlone at the time and they were a real item together — very much young
love. He was at college in Dublin during the week and came home every weekend. By Halloween he had just been a month in college and was home for a long weekend.