What’s your earliest holiday memory?
Going to Wicklow with my family every year to a little wooden house – the best holidays of my childhood.
What was your worst holiday?
Going to work as an au pair in the Basque Country in Spain at 17.
First, I missed the plane, not due to my own fault. Then the hotel I arrived at was the worst in the world. My room had no bathroom, just a communal bathroom down the corridor with plastic curtains, with mould and moss growing, while the towels were paper thin with no pile on them.
Then I moved in with a Spanish family who were difficult. I didn’t know a sinner in the world and it was the loneliest place to be at the time.
It was meant to be a holiday to improve my Spanish but all in all it was a pretty disastrous three months. A good character-forming experience!
What was your best holiday?
Before the last general election in 2006 I went to visit my daughter in New Zealand for a few weeks. Dorothy Ellen was working and travelling in New Zealand and had been away for a year and a half.
My husband, daughter and I hired a camper van. We swam in the North Island and skied in the South Island. It was tremendous – walking, swimming and hiking – heightened by the fact that we had not seen her in over a year.
The friendliness of the people, the food, the culture and the natural environment would make me want to go back there in the morning.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?
A walk of over 2,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in America. You sleep rough, carry everything on your back and have to beware of bears.
You’d get to know your travelling companion very well and if you survive that you can survive anything.
When walking you have periods of solitude, of great company, periods of difficulty, elation and joy. You can really clear your mind and no matter what the problem is, you can walk yourself out of it.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?
A man called Robert!
What’s your favourite place in Ireland?
The Blackstairs Mountains where I live. They are a small range of hills separating Carlow from Wexford. They have beautiful rolling landscapes, wonderful biodiversity, warm and friendly local people, archaeology, history and wildlife – the secret world of the Blackstairs that nobody knows about but they will now!
Your recommended holiday reading?
A Walk in the Woodsby Bill Bryson which is about the Appalachian Trail. It's so amusing and such fun reading, even for the armchair enthusiast.
It would make you want to go straight out to the camping store and do the trail!
Where will you go to next?
I’m having a staycation this summer. I’ll go hiking in the Blackstairs and do some cycling. I want go walking in the Bluestack Mountains in Co Donegal as I’ve never been there.
- Mary White is Minister of State with responsibility for Equality, Integration and Human Rights and Green Party TD for Carlow/Kilkenny
- In conversation with Genevieve Carbery