The stories that time forgot (Part 1)

Eileen Flynn, New Ross

In August 1982, Eileen Flynn, an English and history teacher at the Holy Faith Convent in New Ross, Co Wexford, was dismissed from her job. The facts of the case were: she was unmarried, she had a baby son with a separated married man, and she was living with the same man, Richie Roche. Ireland was in the slough of recession, and to lose any job at that time, let alone a secure teaching job, was something not far off disaster.

The exact reasons she was dismissed were to result in Flynn pursuing the case first through an Employment Appeals Tribunal, then the Circuit Court and the High Court. She lost at each stage. When Judge Noel Ryan gave his judgment at the Circuit Court in July 1984, he said: "Times are changing and we must change with them, but they have not changed that much in this or the adjoining jurisdiction with regard to some things. In other places women are being condemned to death for this sort of offence. They are not Christians in the Far East."

On March 8th, 1985 - International Women's Day - the unfair dismissal case was upheld in the High Court. As recently as 1995, a representative of the Holy Faith order, Sister Rosemary Duffy, wrote in a letter to this newspaper: "Eileen Flynn was dismissed because, in the town where most of the pupils and parents of the school lived, she openly and despite warnings to the contrary, continued to live a lifestyle flagrantly in conflict with the norms which the school sought to promote."

There followed a polarisation of opinion - outrage or agreement - on the outcome of the case both from the public and from public figures. The X Case, Bishop Casey's voluntary exile, and the successful divorce referendum all lay ahead.

Eileen Flynn still lives in New Ross. Changes in the Constitution have meant that she has since been able to marry Richie Roche, with whom she has had two sons, Richard (17) and Diarmuid (14). She hasn't worked as a teacher since: she works now between the two bars which she and her husband own in New Ross. There is now a lay principal at her old school, the Holy Faith Convent, and the number of teaching nuns there - as everywhere - has fallen drastically.

Does she think a case like hers would be taken today?

It's early morning and the bar hasn't opened yet. She sits on a high stool, smokes a cigarette and considers. "I believed in the principle of the case, that's why I took it and even though I lost, I don't regret taking the case. I didn't really expect to win, given the power of the church in those days. At that stage, its reputation was still untarnished. I mean, it wasn't the norm for anyone to be in court at loggerheads with the church those days.

"Public opinion has changed now. Look at that priest being chastised for saying Sonia O'Sullivan was a slut for having a baby and not being married. He didn't get away with it: he had to apologise."

Does she think action would have been taken over a male counterpart of her case: i.e. a male teacher in a religious-run school, who was a single male, and who found he had fathered a baby by a separated married woman? "Well, you can't prove somebody's paternity, but maternity is obvious," she says drily.

"At the time it was a very frightening situation for me. Look at it this way - I had a small child, and my livelihood had just been taken away from me. What would have happened if my relationship had broken down? How would I have supported myself and my child? I'm lucky. Richie and I are still together, but what would have happened if we didn't make it? I thought about those things at the time."

To her knowledge, no similar case has been taken since against a woman in her position, although, as she points out, she was not the only one to whom this happened, before or since. "I got a lot of letters at the time, as well as afterwards, several of them from people in similar situations to myself.

"People were terrified that there was going to be a witch hunt - that my case would just be the first. Yes, the school won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. They got such a lot of unwelcome publicity out of it. I don't think any other school wanted to go through the same thing. It was a test case in a way; it acted as a deterrent."

She can still quote Judge Ryan's words about women in her position being stoned to death in other countries, which at the time, made her cry in court. "It was the thinking behind the comment that counted," she says. "That was worse than what he said." She is also quite convinced that it was no coincidence that the High Court judgment was given on International Women's Day. "I think they wanted to send out a very clear message to women in general."

At the time of the High Court case in 1985, she was pregnant with their second son, but although she was urged by her legal team to draw attention to her pregnancy as evidence of a committed relationship with Roche, she refused. "That wasn't the issue in court, and I didn't want to turn my pregnancy into some sort of public circus. I felt my privacy had already been invaded so much. Before the case, I'd never been in court, not even for a parking fine. And then there I was, answering questions about my sex life."

At the time of her dismissal, Flynn was not a member of any teaching union, which made it more difficult to get help with her case. Does she regret that she wasn't part of a union?

"Yes, I do. I think it would have made a difference, but to what degree, I can't tell. But they did give me the maximum help that they could: they raised funds and issued statements." She feels cheated that legal costs prohibited her from taking the case to Europe: she always wanted to pursue it as far as she could.

At one stage, she did some voluntary work in literacy in a local community workshop, but she hasn't taught in a school since 1982. It was, and remains, a source of regret to her, although she makes it clear life in general is very good these days.

"Initially I did miss the teaching a lot, but it's so long ago now. I suppose there are times I could have tried to re-enter, but I think human nature being what it is, if my name came up before a board of management, nobody would want to choose me over somebody else. If I was on a board of management, I wouldn't employ me. Yes, I do feel sad, that a teaching career was lost to me. It sounds arrogant, but I know I was a good teacher."

And then she starts talking about plans herself and her husband have for the design of the second pub they have recently bought, and about how this is the time of day they usually open up.