Emma Blain flits from one room of the Mansion House to the next, stopping to whisper a question to a staff member. She’s asking if they could save her a sandwich from the catering tray for an event due to happen later – presumably because she hasn’t had time to eat yet. With two children – 11-year-old Hunter and nine-year-old Tilly – and a new job as Lord Mayor of Dublin, there’s lots to juggle. Things have become a little bit more complicated as, just the previous night, Blain and her children had to move out of the Mansion House having only been there since Christmas, when she was appointed to the role.
“There are works starting on the residence: it’s an old building and it needs to be done. I will probably be out for the rest of my term.” She’s understandably disappointed. Living in the Mansion House – where the first Dáil sat in 1919 – is one of the biggest perks of the largely ceremonial job.
“The living situation, I can make that work, it’s a little bit more juggling because I am alone with the kids, though co-parenting,” she says. Blain had moved into the Mansion House the day after she was elected, on December 19th, 2024.
“Moving in at that time of year was so special because the crib was out the front, all the lights were on, there were people singing on the steps every day and Santa was here for a few days. I had friends texting me saying, I’m picturing you doing a Hugh Grant, sliding down the banisters.”
Vogue Williams: ‘Spencer ran towards me with red flags hanging off him in every direction’
Ireland’s rising rents: ‘Our budget would have been €1,300 a month, there isn’t even anything listed for that’
Kneecap review: Mo Chara tells 20,000-strong crowd ‘you have no idea how close we were to being pulled off this gig’
“Christmas morning was unlike any other Christmas morning I’ve had. Santa came, then the kids went to church with their dad [Andrew Macken], and I went to visit kids in Temple Street Hospital. That was really special. Myself and Danny from The Script and a family went around the wards singing. After Temple Street, I went to church on my own, to St Anne’s, which was beautiful.”
Blain’s faith is important to her, and she has been the editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette since 2020.
Because she took up the role of Lord Mayor from her Fine Gael colleague James Geoghegan after his election in Dublin Bay South, her term will only run until the end of June. This has focused her mind.
She has decided on three big priorities: getting more girls into sport, dementia awareness and a special St Patrick’s Day project. “Awareness is a huge thing when it comes to dementia and Alzheimer’s. There are a lot of programmes taking place in our public spaces, in our libraries.”
For Blain, the topic has a particular resonance.
“My dad has dementia. He’s 81 now. He is a really intelligent, caring man. He was a teacher for years, an educator and a psychologist. I like to think of myself as calm, but I’m not compared to my dad. He’s had it for a few years, but it’s progressed a lot in the last couple of years.”
She has two sisters, and talking it through with them and their mother, Dorothy, helped with the process of acceptance.
“I think eventually, about three or four years ago, we said, ‘Okay, we have to go to the doctor, because this is happening’. Now it’s got to the stage where we have to get the supports for my mum, because he’s living at home with her.”
Her plan, which she intends to roll out shortly, is for dementia cafes around Dublin, where carers and those with dementia can come together.
“I want the city council to put these on for the people in our community. People will be able to go to one of our public spaces, whether that be a park with a cafe in it, whether that be a cafe in one of our galleries, and they can bring the person they’re caring for ... and find support in other carers.
“It’s a big thing to take on, for a family, to realise that this is happening, that the person that you know is changing, that they’re fading away, in many ways. My dad, he knows who I am. There’s never an issue with that. But I don’t think he fully is aware that I’m the Lord Mayor of Dublin.”
Tied into this plan for dementia cafes is another proposal, which she hopes to have up and running in time for St Patrick’s Day.
“We need to remind ourselves of what we love about this amazing city. I am going to do a call-out to all Dubliners to ask them to tell me what they love about the city, or what they loved about the city. We’re going to do something around St Patrick’s Day with that. I want to hand out the message with these visual representations of what people loved about Dublin, and a message about dementia awareness on the back. So, you know, aren’t we lucky that we can remember? But if you’re struggling, if you know someone who’s struggling with their memory, this is where you can turn.”
Her formative years in Dublin were spent in Rathmines, where her father, Sydney, was the principal of the Church of Ireland College of Education.
“We lived in a house in the grounds of the college, which was amazing. It was a small college. There was an empty, hollowed-out swimming pool. My sisters and I used to love going in there and dreaming that we were Olympic swimmers.” Blain and her sisters spent their teenage years “operating a babysitting cartel”. From a young age she had a good idea of what she wanted her future to look like.
I always wanted to be a journalist, I always wanted to be a writer, and I always loved politics
“I always wanted to be a journalist, I always wanted to be a writer, and I always loved politics.”
She studied politics in UCD, and was active with Fine Gael.
While there, she started to write for the University Observer, one of two student newspapers on campus. “Because of my Fine Gael connections, I got an interview with Enda Kenny and an interview with Pat Rabbitte. They were both the leaders of the opposition at the time so there was a double page spread of me interviewing them.”
As it happened, a controversy had erupted within the Observer at the same time, resulting in the editor stepping down.
“So this issue ended up on all the news desks, because they were all interested in this controversy. It happened to be the week that the student media awards were on.” She went to the awards ceremony and bumped into two senior editors from the Sunday Independent. They had seen her political interviews, and offered her work. She wrote her first news piece the following week, and ended up writing full time.
At the start of her journalism career, when she was in her early 20s, she joined what would become known as “the 03 team”, formed in 2003. Also on the team were Siobhán O’Connor, Sonia Harris and Julia Molony, with the young women regularly writing about love, sex and partying. Provocative photographs often accompanied the writing. The team members were not afraid to cause outrage, and were encouraged by their editors to be unbothered about any negative reaction they encountered.
At one stage, they “gatecrashed” a Fianna Fáil ardfheis, the male-dominated audience apparently left agog by the sight of these young women in denim miniskirts and red stilettos. The team was later disbanded, and Blain went on to continue her journalism career as a feature writer, and then politician.
“It was fun,” says Blain. “I was 21. I would say, though, that we did a thing last year, 20 years on from then. I was really nervous about that. I thought: I don’t know where this is going to go.” She is referencing an article that came out last year and saw some of the women come back together to reflect on their time on the 03 team.
“But I think what is really important, when you look back at it now, is the context in which it was done. It was fun. That is what it was. But doing that now, I think it would be a completely different ballgame. It was different then. Could you imagine if we were doing that now, and it was on social media? I couldn’t.”
Blain has no regrets and does not give any sense that she is annoyed to be asked about this period in her life. Instead, she talks about the doors it opened for her.
“It was a little part of what I did ... but I was writing news features, doing lifestyle features, working on the magazine long after that, for years. I freelanced for a while and got to meet so many interesting people: celebrities, people who have done amazing work in their communities.” She references interviewing Kylie Minogue in Paris for Irish Tatler as a highlight in the years after. After working for a while as a freelance journalist, she then went on to work for Fine Gael in the Dublin press office.
“I started off our digital media. I set up our Facebook and Twitter. I remember vividly the 2011 election and having to monitor and moderate all of this ... It was really draining.”
Did she have any hesitation, then, about making the leap into politics?
“I did. The party first approached me about running when I was in my early 20s. I felt I didn’t know enough about life or the world. I felt I needed more life experience. That moment came when Tilly was a baby. When Neale Richmond was elected to the Seanad [from being a councillor on Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council], there was an opportunity. That was 2016, and I said, I’m going to give it a go. I’m just going to go for it. I threw my hat in and I have never looked back.”
Back then, baby Tilly “didn’t sleep at all. So I didn’t sleep. I remember feeding her with the phone in my hand and answering emails and rubbing her back at midnight.” Blain ran unsuccessfully in last November’s general election, but says she intends to run again.
“It’s hard enough to get into this business as a woman. Once you’re in there, you just have to keep on going.”
