‘Nobody has said it to my face’ - Helen McEntee hits back at sexism on her return from maternity leave

When Minister for Justice Helen McEntee arrived back to her office exactly a month ago, she returned to two very unusual schools of thought about her second maternity leave.

One of them, muttered privately in political circles, was that she had engineered a “political masterstroke” by being away from the many raging fires in the Department of Justice. The other was that she had spent so much time away that she was effectively no longer a viable candidate for the leadership of her party, Fine Gael, when the time comes.

In an in-depth interview with The Irish Times, McEntee does not hold back. She labels some of the commentary around her maternity leave as “insulting” and “ridiculous”.

“If you are in a department for five years, you don’t avoid fires. There are always issues and there are always things you have to deal with. The idea that you take maternity leave to avoid doing your work: it’s insulting,” she says.

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“We live in 2023... it’s pretty ridiculous and I think women looking at that as well are appalled reading that.”

On the claim she has lost her footing in a future leadership race, she is equally as forthright.

“It is the same as the comments about me having babies and how that impacts on my work. I don’t think it has any bearing on what I do in my career or on what I decide to do or might decide not to do. I don’t really see that as being something that’s going to impede anything that I want to do,” she says.

There was another startling comment in a magazine that McEntee “has babies” while her Cabinet colleague, Simon Harris, the Minister for Higher Education who stood in for her during her maternity leave, “gets things done”.

McEntee learned of this comment only in recent days. Her attitude is: say it to my face.

“What I note about comments I have seen is that nobody’s brave enough to put their name to it. It reflects more on the people who say them. As I said, nobody – nobody – has been brave enough to put their name to it. And nobody has said it to my face. So that says more about them,” she says.

Comparisons between McEntee and Harris have taken up plenty of column inches. The Minister for Higher Education told The Irish Times last month that he gave it his all during his stint in justice, but there was no concern for McEntee about being outshone by her colleague.

“Simon did a great job in fairness, and he took on an extra department, the same way Heather Humphreys did the last time. That is not an easy thing to do. He obviously continued a huge amount of work that I had started. I have a justice plan, so there are clear timelines, but he also put his own stamp on it and he focused on issues that he wanted to focus on,” she says.

Podcast: Helen McEntee on maternity leave criticism and retaking the reins at Justice

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“It’s easy to compare and say one person has done this or the other. But, again, it’s not something that I pass any notice on and I certainly wasn’t sitting at home going: what’s he doing? What’s going on here? It just wasn’t happening.”

Harris has not been shy about his ambitions in terms of maybe one day leading Fine Gael, and to a certain extent neither has McEntee.

“I have never ruled anything out. I have always said I am ambitious. It is not a way to avoid a question when I say that I am focused on what I’m doing. Anyone who knows me and my work knows that I give it 120 per cent,” she says.

But she adds: “There is no vacancy. The narrative that there is a split – one of us pitting against the other and this constant comparing. Actually we work really well together as a team. I think Leo is a fantastic leader. I really do. And I think that he should be leading us into the next election and beyond.”

McEntee is candid about returning to work after giving birth to her second son, Vincent, who is now six months old.

In terms of the justice portfolio, she offers a staunch defence of the hate crime and speech Bill, sets out Ireland’s strategy on a recently agreed EU migration plan and weighs in on a matter being widely avoided by most Ministers: the potential reform of Ireland’s abortion law.

Asked about how her last month has been since returning from maternity leave, she admits she was “nearly dreading it” but says it did not take long to settle back in.

“I had promised myself before I came back that I would try to maybe balance things a little bit better, work and home life. I am not doing too bad making sure that I get home in time for bedtime during the week and that I am not gone at the crack of dawn every morning. It is a fine balancing act... it is going okay so far,” she says.

“The older I get, and obviously with the fact that I have two kids now, I have kind of come to realise it is not straightforward. It is not easy, and you do have to juggle, and sometimes you have to compromise and sometimes you end up having more work on your plate than you’d like.”

One word that crops up is “guilt” – something that afflicts many parents returning to work.

“If there is a day or two where I have not seen them too often, I will come home and I will think: oh my God, they have changed,” she says.

“Or with Vincent, who is only six months old, [I will think] he looks different. And I am thinking: how long is it since I’ve seen him? It might only be a day or two but I mean, they are changing that quickly. You think, has it been a week? How has he changed so quickly? And you do get that kind of guilt... that I should be there all the time. But in another sense I love my job and I love doing what I am doing.”

The idea you would say to someone: go back and think about that again – quite frankly, I don’t agree with it

—  Helen McEntee on the abortion three-day wait

McEntee has come under fire in recent weeks over the proposed hate crime law, which she hopes to have enacted by the end of the year. Concerns have been raised by some politicians about the potential for the legislation to have a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech and at the lack of a definition for hatred in the proposed law.

There appears to be significant pushback from the public too, which she cannot ignore. Some Senators have argued that the process is being rushed, which McEntee rejects.

“Our commitment in the Programme for Government was to do it in the first year. We are now three years in so I am certainly not rushing it,” she says.

“There are actual protections in this Bill that allow people to say something that another person might not agree with or might find offensive. There is a very clear delineation between someone stating a fact or having an opinion to then crossing a line and encouraging other people to go out and hate that person or the group of people, or to be violent against them.”

She says it comes down to “what do the gardaí think? Is there enough evidence? What does the DPP think? Should it go to court? In a court what do a jury of your peers think? Did this person actually mean to cause hatred against another group of people?”

Another issue to have emerged in the debate is around the definition of hate, with some people calling for this to be more explicitly defined.

McEntee says she has strong advice from the Attorney General not to define hate explicitly, but she concedes that she is open to providing further clarifications as the Bill progresses.

“Hate is a well-known, understood concept. We are only halfway through a process and, as is the case, with any legislation, I am open to engaging with colleagues, I have said this from the very outset,” she says.

Another issue which has been high on the political agenda, but which many Ministers outside the Green Party have been reluctant to comment on, are the detailed changes to the State’s abortion law recommended by barrister Marie O’Shea in her report. McEntee says she backs the removal of the three-day wait to access medication, making her the first Fine Gael Cabinet member to do so. She also supports the decriminalisation of medical practitioners.

“I am pretty straightforward on that. I don’t believe there should be a three-day wait. I think if a woman has made a decision to actually go to a doctor or go to a hospital, it is not the first time they have thought about it,” she says.

“The idea you would say to someone: go back and think about that again – quite frankly, I don’t agree with it. I think it is difficult enough for a person to walk into that scenario and personally I would be in favour of that recommendation,” she says.

On migration, McEntee welcomes a “crucial” agreement to overhaul the EU migration system struck between member states at the start of June.

Under the new agreement, all EU countries must help the frontline border states that see the most migrant arrivals to cope, but they can choose how to do so, either by financial contributions, sending personnel or accepting some asylum seekers themselves.

While McEntee has not yet made a recommendation to Government on whether or not to opt in to the measures, she indicates that Ireland will align itself with the plans in more ways than not.

“The anticipation and plan would be that we align in as far as possible and that we will, at certain stages, opt in,” she says.

When she was promoted to Minister for Justice, McEntee placed reforming Ireland’s domestic violence policies at the top of her list of priorities. However, recently published figures appear to show that progress is slow. Earlier this month, the Irish Daily Mail reported that only nine new refuge places had been created in the past 18 months.

McEntee says that while progress may appear slow from the outside, work continues, including making 50 new “safe houses” available by the end of the year, and a new statutory body to oversee services set up by the new year.

She also pledged to discuss with the Department of Public Expenditure delays of up to six months in the State lab in processing samples for toxicology reports, an issue which is in turn leading to delays in inquests and heartache for families.

McEntee also indicated that the Sale of Alcohol Bill, which will detail longer opening hours for nightclubs and standardised hours for bars, will not be passed until 2024.

This week, controversially, she secured a High Court order forcing mobile phone service providers to retain the data of phone users for 12 months for the purpose of “safeguarding the security of the State”. The application followed the successful legal challenge by convicted murderer Graham Dwyer to legislation under which mobile phone data was retained and used in the prosecution of the 2012 murder of childcare worker Elaine O’Hara.

For McEntee, it has certainly been a busy month since her return to office. As she concludes the interview, she grabs a stack of reading papers from her adviser and prepares to race off for her next meeting.

Before she goes, she recalls a Women in Business meeting she spoke at in Trim at the age of 26, when she wasn’t married and didn’t have kids.

She told the room: “We can do everything. We should be able to do everything. There’s nothing that can stop us.”

Afterwards a woman approached her and gently suggested that it is quite hard to juggle it all.

“And now, myself, 10 years later, I’m like yeah, I know exactly what she meant,” she says.

Helen McEntee - a decade in politics

Raised on the family farm in Castletown, Co Meath, Helen McEntee has been steeped in politics from a young age. She won a Dáil seat in the 2013 byelection following the death of her father, Shane McEntee.

She became interested in politics during her schooldays in Meath and went on to complete a degree in economics, politics and law at Dublin City University.

After finishing college in 2007, she went to work for a subsidiary of Citibank, but the job was not for her. She then went on to finish a master’s in journalism and media communications.

In the summer of 2010, she began to work in Leinster House with her father, who was then an Opposition TD and later moved with him to work in the Department of Agriculture after the 2011 election, when he was appointed minister of State for food and horticulture.

The sudden death of her father had a profound impact on her; she resolved to continue his work, winning that seat in the 2013 Meath East byelection.

She secured 9,356 votes, or 38.5 per cent of the vote in the first count.

Her first big promotion came after her re-election in 2016 when former taoiseach Enda Kenny named her minister of State for mental health and older people. After Leo Varadkar took the reins of Fine Gael in the summer of 2017, McEntee was appointed as minister of State for European affairs.

She remained by his side throughout the early days of Brexit and grew in confidence. It was, to those close to Varadkar, no surprise then that she was appointed by him as Minister for Justice in 2020.