NOVEMBER 1994 and the breakup of the Fianna Fail Labour coalition Government marked the beginning of the most distressing period in the political life of then Minister for Justice, Maire Geoghegan Quinn. She remembers the longs wait over the Christmas holiday as a time of personal isolation.
"It was the first time in my political life, I felt that people did not believe me. I didn't want to go out. I felt people were judging me." As she prepared for her appearance before the Dail Sub Committee on Legislation and Security, which was investigating the circumstances surrounding the Whelehan/Smyth affair, she could not sleep and when she did: "I had nightmares about being cross examined by my former boss, Dessie O'Malley." Her evidence to the Dail Committee lasted 35 minutes; the cross examination took five and a half hours. "At the end of it, I felt exonerated. But that's not the point, it was difficult, being questioned by my peers. I had never been in court in my life, not even as a witness. It was a horrible experience."
But it was not her first political crisis. Geoghegan Quinn had also gambled and appeared to have lost when she joined the Reynolds led dissidents voicing a loss of confidence in the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, in November 1991. His survival on that occasion appeared to consign her to the political wilderness. Compromise, she agrees, is a fact of political life: "I think every politician has to compromise themselves from time to time.
Her most recent disappointments appear to be rooted in Reynolds's bewildering determination to support Harry Whelehan in, his ambition to become president of the High Court, an appointment decided with out the consent of coalition partner Labour and much objected to. "I believed in that Fianna Fail/Labour coalition, she says. I felt there was a very good working relationship, between the parties and that I, had a particularly good working relationship with Dick Spring. Substantial progress had been made in relation to the North, and there fore I was shocked when Dick rounded up his troops and marched out of government on that day."
On the subject of Mr Whelehan, she says: "I can't understand someone wanting something so much for themselves when no one else wanted it. If I as a member of the government, was causing so much difficulty for the Taoiseach of the day I would resign from the government. But, that's just me, or maybe it's because I'm a woman. While the report which Whelehan submitted to the government as an exoneration of his office's delay in processing, the Brendan Smyth case was not well received, "everyone accepted that Whelehan was personally unaware of the case".
Then, speaking on Morning Ireland in one of the many interviews held after he had pulled out of government, Dick Spring indicated that a Fianna Fail Minister had used a phrase about getting Harry Whelehan "off the pitch" and, according to Geoghegan Quinn, alleged that it was she who used the phrase in relation to approaches the government had made to Whelehan, attempting to secure the withdrawal of his claim to the presidency of the High Court. "I went on the News At One to deny that I had used or would ever use such terminology. Even a number of Labour Ministers had by then indicated privately that I had not used that phrase; but he (Spring) never took the opportunity then or since to say that he was wrong. That allegation soured my political relations with Dick Spring." It is an insult she will not forget.
"While the Dail Committee provided some of the best television screened in Ireland, the chaotic farce hardly marked a glorious epoch for Irish politics. Yet now all seems forgotten. Is the public memory really gas brief as the politicians appear to believe?
"It is short. It is amazing how quickly things are forgotten. Sometimes this is good other times it is not," she says. The committee did not end so much as fizzle out, or perhaps it was simply killed off by Fergus it did because it suddenly dawned on everyone that there was no conspiracy. None of us knew what was going on, everything was moving too fast." Put that way, it sounds as if the members of the Dail were like so many confused characters in a play without a script. Yes, it was something like that I suppose.
It is now 21 years since Maire Geoghegan Quinn first took her seat in the Dail after beginning a career in the most traditional of ways, contesting a by election called on the sudden death of her father, Johnny Geoghegan. At that time she was a primary school teacher, newly married and the mother of a six month old son.
"I had always loved debating and had been interested in politics but at the time I became involved, I had not planned it. Had my father not died at that time, I wouldn't have become involved so soon. Although she had wanted to be a doctor her mother advised her to be a teacher. On qualifying from Carysfort teacher training college, she found herself in charge of a class of 63 primary level children at Scoil Bhride in Ranelagh, "and I loved it".
To date, her political career has been marked by success and some disappointments. She has held three ministerial portfolios the Gaeltacht, followed by Tourism, Transport and Communication, and Justice until December 1994. Now Marino Books is to publish her first novel in May. Green Diamond, about four girls sharing a house in Dublin in the late 1960s, one of whose fathers is involved in politics, was written over 15 months. "I really concentrated during the six week period after I broke my ankle at the Fianna Fail Christmas party."
As a serious career politician, is she not running the risk of being compared with Edwina Currie? "No, it's only a bit of fun. Bits of politics based on my experiences but, basically it's fun, popular fiction. I'm not producing a great literary work either. I've always kept a journal. I love reading and writing and classical music."
Her bid for leadership of the party ended in her stepping down. "I didn't have the support to win the party leadership at that time. Bertie had the support of the majority of the parliamentary party. I felt that pushing my own personal ambition would have created a divided party." How does she feel about the leadership of Ahern, a politician whose popularity is probably greater outside the party than within? He is very popular, young and energetic, he is growing into the job. He is good for the party.
Although, she says, she was closer to Reynolds. Haughey was her political mentor. He was the consummate politician. When Haughey walked into a room people noticed and he's only a little fellow. He had a slightly aloof air. Whereas Albert Reynolds, who is friendly and down to earth could be chatting away for half an hour before anyone would notice he was there. Any other person in his position would have said to Harry sorry, you can't have this job but Reynolds being Reynolds had made a promise and had to fulfill it." Noting the similarities shared by the autocratic personalities of Haughey and Thatcher, she points out: "They, both made the mistake of out staying their welcome. It is very important in politics to know when to go."
Born in Caina, Connemara in 1950, she was the eldest of two children. Her father Johnny worked for CIE as a bus conductor, he used to bring home all the messages for everyone. He was very popular. Having become involved in county council politics in 1947, Johnny Geoghegan was recruited by Fianna Fail and won a seat in the Dail in 1954. When Marie's younger brother was diagnosed as a diabetic at 15 (at 42, he is still on dialysis), the family was advised to move closer to a hospital. Life in the Galway suburbs was very different to a small village in Connemara. "The move was hard on my mother, she is a Carna woman." As a child Maire had attended a local national school, Colaiste Muire, and then became a boarder in Tur Mhic Eadaigh, her mother's old school in Mayo.
Maire Geoghegan Quinn lives in a comfortable modern house in a new estate off the Spiddal Road outside Galway. Built on a site she and her husband, John Quinn, had purchased some years earlier, the interior was designed to their own specifications, while the decor is dominated by feminine pastels and floral fabrics. She has lived there for two years. Before that, the couple rented for four years after selling their first house in the east Galway suburb of Renmore, where they had lived for 15 years.
A committed native Irish speaker, she is a robust individual with a straight shouldered, imposing presence, a good sense of humour and an engaging smile. Considered intimidating by some commentators, she is practical, no nonsense and direct. Her language plain and free of metaphor. Less given, to professional friendliness than many of her colleagues, she is probably more of a woman's woman - "I never go off to the pub", nor does she attend the funerals of people she has never met.
More than most as an outspoken individual, she is conscious of the public's dislike of assertive women. "If a man is ambitious or assertive, he is perceived as directed and in control. If a woman is assertive she will be dismissed as aggressive, pushy, abrasive. She castigated Austin Currie for his comments about her "handbagging" the Aer Lingus executive body. Recently, she rebuked Proinsias De Rossa in the Dail when he apologised to her in Irish. He knew half the members would not understand. I thought if was smartalecky of him and it was a disservice to the national language."
Women, she believes, enter politics out of concern, "because you're a listener appalled by misery and deprivation. The whole grinding process of politics can turn you into somebody else." People do get hardened, she remarks. "Remember the night the newly elected women politicians - were on the Late Late, and a man phoned in and asked who was minding their children? He was putting into words a particular viewpoint that still exists."
For all her control and steady gaze, she is an emotional person, she says, crying easily but never over her career. "I think people tend to forget that politicians are people with human problems as well.
"Women politicians are carers in a strong, practical way. I also think that women politicians are strong on justice issues."
Her career has run parallel with several serious family illnesses: on the day before she testified to the Dail Committee, her personal secretary and best friend, Diana Deering smashed a verterbra in her neck while lifting files from the Dail. "She is paralysed from her shoulder to the tips of her fingers, I feel very guilty about this. First of all that it happened and secondly that I was not there to support her." During the breakup of the Government, her husband John was hospitalised for a serious operation.
As Minister for Justice, Geoghegan Quinn faced potentially strong opposition from within the party for decriminalising homosexuality. "I had no views about it all. I was looking at outstanding business in the law division, and the decriminalisation of homosexuality was on the list of outstanding legislation. I asked about the David Norris case and realised here is a man who could take us to Europe - again." She then had a number of requests from gay and lesbian organisations campaigning for reform and agreed to meet a number of them.
"The first group included gays and lesbians but also a middle aged woman: I found her presence puzzling," she recalls. "She was the last to make her case. My son came home and told me he was gay.'"
The woman said her first reaction was that he would grow out of it. Then she brought him to a priest; a doctor; a psychologist; a psychiatrist. "It was one mother talking to another, mother, she said she loved every bone in his body and wasn't going to stop loving him. But now she had discovered that the Government had decided he as a homosexual was a criminal."
Geoghegan Quinn says. She had a profound effect on me, I found myself wondering what if it were one of my sons."
Although she was warned of the potential opposition within her own party, she was committed to the issue.
IRELAND is a small country: everyone seems, to know everyone else. Does this explain why politics in Ireland is more concerned with chatter and personalised, inter party mudslinging than with theoretical debate?
"Politics is like that everywhere." Does it explain why there is no apparent intellectual dimension in Irish politics?
"The Irish are far more politically astute than their English or American, counterparts. Politicians are very accessible here. People know their local, TD." As for the question about the missing intellectual dimension, her silence is eloquent. Pragmaticism, not philosophy, governs the practical world of Irish politics.
The hepatitis scandal is something she feels strongly about. "When we were in Government the then Minister for Health Brendan Howlin appointed Miriam Hederman O'Brien to carry out an investigation into the Blood Transfusion Service Board. She reported in 1995.
"The first group were the women who had been given Anti D as a life saving treatment and instead got infected with a life threatening disease. If I were Minister for Health we would have a statutory tribunal. I believe there are numerous deficiencies with the ad hoc tribunal; the terms under which it is established do not allow victims as a right to have medical, oral evidence presented. The victims themselves don't even have an absolute right to give evidence, to the tribunal. Witnesses can't be compelled to attend. If the first group, the Anti D women, had been men it would have been handled differently I don't want to appear sexist, but the treatment is shameful particularly when one knows that the State's responsible for this scandal. Women are not as good at putting their case as men, especially women who are ill. They need the tribunal to be made as easy as possible."
Ireland's current crime epidemic has brought the Department of Justice to a new prominence. "It is important for the Minister to be in control and to be seen in control. The Justice Minister must be reassuring. No one ever asks for Justice, it's a bad news, department. It means calls in the middle of the night; a body is discovered, there's been a kidnapping, a bank raid, a murder. It is a "hard job. But of all the departments I have worked in, it's the one I enjoyed most. I found it open to change, unlike my perceptions of it."
SHE has few illusions. Retaining her, seat has never been easy. Galway, West is an extremely conservative constituency, "it is urban and rural; it is a social mix". Over 20 years ago, in one of her first interviews, Geoghegan Quinn said she was in favour of divorce and family planning: these beliefs have not changed.
"I know that my having decriminalised homosexuality and also my having voted in favour of divorce could be used against me. Political rhetoric has no role in her hopes for the future. I want to retain my, seat, and am anxious to be back in Government."
What can she offer her country now? A great deal of political experience, while my particular life experience gives me an urgency and an insight, I would hope to help women develop resilience and help them to be unashamed about ambition, also to rely on and trust each other. I'd like to get more women into politics; we have the energy, the ambition, the ideas and, the confidence." Fianna Fail, she stresses, is weary of accepting its almost traditional role as a group of cunning shopkeepers.
Asked, whether politics exists outside party politics, she says her own belief in party is strong: I'm utterly loyal to it. Emotional, passionate - not sentimental - put definitely passionate. I defend it against attack, but criticise it within. For years we've accepted being seen as "cute hoors" and allowed the other parties to act as if every crook in the country belonged to Fianna Fail. When we were in Government with Labour, it was as if we were supposed to be grateful to be in partnership with these squeaky clean saints who had lowered themselves by sitting in with a crowd of gangsters like us. Fianna Fail isn't going to accept this image anymore, we are challenging it."
As the three main parties in common with political parties across Europe - are now at the centre, battling for the voice of the people, is there any space left for politics beyond inter party rivalry?
"The core vote is getting smaller. The floating vote is increasing. We no longer live in an Ireland where your mother and father will dictate how you vote. The high moral ground is of course occupied by Dick Spring and the Labour Party, and the high moral ground is the most dangerous place to be in politics, there is only one way to go, down."
