First encounters
In conversation with FRANCES O’ROURKE
FRANCES FITZGERALD
is the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. She worked as a social worker in London and Dublin, going into politics after chairing the National Women’s Council in the late 1980s. She was elected for Dublin Mid-West in the 2011 election. She is married to Michael Fitzgerald and has three adult sons
‘KATHLEEN AND I MET in London in our first few days in LSE [London School of Economics], where we were both studying social work, doing our MScs. We’d both been in UCD but didn’t know each other, and both of us had worked in London as social workers. We just connected, and it’s a connection that’s lasted right through the years. It was 1977, we were both married, both in our mid-20s.