Keeping an eye on a dangerous family trait

Emma Kinsella, who celebrates her 21st birthday this month, has a "great" relationship with her father. Seeing him more as a friend than a paternal figure, she talks to him freely about "everything" - from her studies to her boyfriend and nights out "on the piss".

However much she loves chatting with him, though, they never meet at the Wicklow home she shares with her mother, her younger sister, Maeve, and her mum's partner.

This is because she still has painful memories of Dad living there - even though he moved out when she was only three: "I remember him throwing the telephone," she says. "Another time he threw a set of keys and it marked the lino on the kitchen floor - there was a mark there for years after he left."

It is 15 years since Thomas J Kinsella, a Dublin-based writer, took an alcoholic drink but he can still remember looking after his young daughters while drunk: "It horrifies me to think that when I was taking care of them I was actually inebriated to a considerable extent," he says.

Following the marital break-up, a court ruled he could see the girls two afternoons a week. He was banned from coming anywhere near their home - an order he eventually broke. Emma clearly recalls him approaching the house while "out of his mind on drink" on a number of occasions: "I can remember him trying to get in the door and Mum not letting him in. I remember thinking that was weird: I felt sorry for Dad and I couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed in. I remember vividly a time when the garda∅ came and took him away - I remember thinking that was terrible."

Kinsella puts his marital separation and subsequent divorce down to his chronic alcoholism. It was two years after moving out that he stopped drinking. Having taken his first alcoholic drink at 16 he had become a heavy drinker within months, though it would be another few years before he accepted he had a problem.

"My first serious effort to stop drinking was when I was 21," he says. "I remember saying to myself that I had drunk alcohol every single day for the past year: I didn't like that and I knew there was something wrong. I discovered there was no magic cure and I was 33 when I finally had my last drink."

At this time Emma was only six, and Maeve three, and, despite giving up alcohol, Kinsella came to see his children less and less. "We had sporadic meetings, but I was living in Sandymount and then in Rathmines," he says, "I had no car and it was quite difficult to see them. Although I didn't see them regularly again until Emma was in her teens, we always had a tremendous amount of telephone contact."

In recent years, Kinsella has encouraged his daughters to call the shots. "They ring me when they want to talk about something," he says. "It could be anything from the death of their cat to boyfriend problems."

His open relationship with his daughters extends to their telling him about their social lives, including their drinking habits: "They don't try to hide their alcohol consumption from me, but I constantly disapprove of the quantity of drink they take and of their behaviour while drinking. And I point out some factors to them that would point to the very early onset of alcohol addiction."

The risk of becoming an alcoholic does not deter Emma from drinking, however. Whereas at her age her father was drinking every day, she generally limits herself to one night a week.

She does admit, however, that she shares certain traits with her dad that she finds "a bit scary": "We both have a very obsessive personality - we both like coffee and drink it all the time. Anything I find I like, I get into a bit excessively and that's why I have to keep a check on my drinking."

Emma is confident that she knows more about the potential dangers of alcohol than others her own age: "I don't really worry about it because I think a huge part of it is knowing about it. There are so many factors that lead to alcoholism and I'm definitely more aware of them."