Just Mary (25 page)

But not so long after that, I saw the dirty work begin to operate. Fianna Fáil voters in Westmeath were told to vote ‘number one Donie Cassidy; number two Mary
O’Rourke’, and that this would be the best way for us to get two seats in Westmeath, plus the seat in Longford. It was all so absurd and yet it happened anyway. Donie started to
swagger, saying he would ‘drive Mary O’Rourke back to the bridge and the walls of Athlone’. When he started his canvassing in earnest, he began to put up posters in Moate and
Kilbeggan and Tyrellspass — all my strongholds. ‘No holds barred’ — that seemed to be the mantra.

So, why did I not, as a feisty person, put up a feisty response? Looking back now, it is clear that, in terms of my career, this was where the loss of Enda really began to manifest itself. He
would have been up in his local, The Green Olive; he would have been around and about the town and would have had the ears and confidences of many; he would have been able to suss out what plots
were going on. But Enda was gone and I was alone. Yes, of course I had my friends and my family and their great love and support, but I was alone as I never had been before, and, in a political
sense, I had no one to watch out and be vigilant for me in the way that Enda always had.

I did my best, however, to put up a good campaign and I canvassed as always, and my faithful rallied round me. But I had a leaden weight in my heart each night, when I came home to the house
alone, knowing what awaited me. Added to that was the residual physical discomfort of having broken my left ankle some months earlier. Of course, it had been expertly fixed with five pins in the
Mater Hospital, but it caused me discomfort and pain from time to time, particularly when I was tired. Add it all up, and I had a dispiriting campaign. When I went to Kenagh on the day of the
count, it was as I had anticipated: I had lost my seat. In Mullingar they were rampant and, boy, were they rampant: ‘Back to Athlone with you, Madam’, was more or less what I was told,
and the Cheshire cat grin on the face of P.J. Mara when he was asked the following day, in an
RTÉ
review of the election, what he thought of the result — well,
that said it all, really!

I was on
RTÉ
myself that night, beamed in from the Athlone studio to join Charlie McCreevy (our then Minister for Finance) and the commentator in a discussion. At
one point the presenter said, ‘Well, is it back to the knitting for you now, Mary?’ I was indignant at this, and when I replied, ‘I never knitted and I don’t intend to start
now’, McCreevy chipped in and said, ‘No, I can’t imagine Mary either knitting or being quiet . . .’ Anyway I went home after that, and I was fuming, absolutely fuming!

I was angry about the subterranean campaign which had been waged against me and annoyed with myself too, for not putting up more of a fight in the face of it. As well as the loss of Enda, I
suppose one other reason for this was that, as deputy leader of the party, I had felt that I should set a good example to other candidates throughout the country, go with party strategy and not be
seen to get involved in internal wrangling. Apart from my own instincts about it all, I had had an early warning about what was to happen, and I should have heeded it. John O’Donoghue, my
colleague and dear friend from Kerry, had telephoned me one day some time before the election and said, ‘Beef up, Mary! I have been told to give territory to [whichever candidate was running
with him], and I said “Oh sure, yes, that’s what I’ll do”, and off I went. But I have no intention of doing what they’ve told me, of course!’ But John’s
patch in south Kerry was a long, long way from Dublin, whereas I was right in the line of fire. Anyway, be that as it may, I suppose in the end we have to take fate as it comes. I tried to keep
thinking of Enda and what he would be saying to me, now that I had lost my seat. But, of course, none of it would have happened if he had been alive.

There was to be a further development, however: a positive adjunct to that defeat. Later on, when I got home that night to my house in Athlone, all of my friends and my political colleagues came
round, and we drank and talked and moaned for a number of hours. I suppose I didn’t get to bed until about two o’clock in the morning, in fact. Before I went to bed, Feargal — who
was down from Dublin and staying overnight — and Aengus and I came up with a plan. They bolstered me up and egged me on, saying, ‘You’ll ring Bertie tomorrow [which was a Sunday],
and you’ll tell him what you want!’

I finally went to bed. At five o’clock in the morning, I got a call from Senator Terry Leyden, a good friend whom I had always held close, from the time when he was a young man, aged 21
and Deputy Director of Elections for my brother Brian, and later as a family friend. Terry commiserated with me and then said, ‘By the way, there is an immediate vacancy in the Seanad
now.’ It seemed that Senator Tom Fitzgerald had decided just a few days earlier to retire because of ill-health. Terry was insistent, saying, ‘Get in touch with Bertie Ahern
immediately, and say you want to be given this.’

With Terry’s words and the urging of my sons the night before still ringing in my ears, when I got up a few hours later, I was more or less decided that I would ring Bertie. I can still
remember how determined I felt that I would do now what I had not done throughout the whole campaign: stand up on my feet and demand! Interestingly but not surprisingly, I suppose, was the fact
that the night before, and with all the otherwise good news for Fianna Fáil, Bertie Ahern had not once thought to telephone me in Westmeath to commiserate with me — and I was his
deputy leader, after all. But that was Bertie. No doubt he knew that I would begin to berate him and probably he thought, ‘Let’s put it off for a while.’ The night before, in
fact, Mandy Johnston — who was Communications Director of Fianna Fáil at the time, and a very fine one too — had telephoned me to say that she was prevailing on Bertie to call
me.

Mandy rang again that Sunday morning to say that I should be expecting a call from Bertie soon and so I held myself in readiness. When he rang, I took the call in the room I use as my office,
and Feargal and Aengus came in to stand beside me. The Taoiseach offered his commiserations in that nice, soft voice and, do you know, I very nearly weakened. But I had a son on either side of me,
prodding me and spurring me on. I told Bertie I wanted the vacant Seanad seat and that I wanted to be Leader of the Seanad too, which was also in the gift of the Taoiseach. I said this was the
least I was owed for the way I had been ‘done’ — and many more strong words besides. It was as if suddenly I got my voice and spirit back and was determined to see this through.
Finally he agreed to my request, telling me too that he would as leader put forward my nomination when the time came, so I would not have to go around the country myself, seeking the votes of the
Fianna Fáil county councillors and borough councillors.

I had at least taken something from the ashes and I began to feel more mollified and settled. There was a further little twist to this tale, which is illustrative, I suppose, of my nature and my
approach, and indeed of Bertie’s nature too. It happened after he had been proclaimed Taoiseach once more, with the Progressive Democrats as his partners. Some of the Independents were being
kept on board also: Bertie always clung to them as a kind of comfort blanket to ensure that he would have a fall-back position if need be, and how wise he was in that. There is no doubt in my mind
that he was ‘the most cunning, the most devious’, as Charlie Haughey famously said.

Anyway, in the time immediately after his reinstatement as Taoiseach, Bertie said he wanted to meet with me. I duly went over to his office — down that beautiful, long, blue-carpeted
corridor and into his inner sanctum, with the portrait of Pádraig Pearse on the wall. There he was waiting for me, with his gentle, limpid eyes. He proceeded to ask if I would not go around
the country after all, to get the votes of the councils, as he felt sure that if I did so, I would be returned to Seanad Éireann without any difficulty. I just looked at him, horrified. It
was not that I was afraid of the hard work which would be involved, but that he had
promised
me that I would be one of his eleven (by law, the Taoiseach is entitled to appoint eleven members
of his own choosing to the Seanad)!

When I said as much to him, Bertie backed down quite quickly, saying, ‘Oh, okay, okay, alright, alright, Mary! You will be appointed.’ Yet he had tried the trick to see if I would go
for it, because he would have preferred to have had another Seanad seat to give away to someone else. But I was fired up by the thought that I was well due this kind of recognition at the very
least, for all the time I had worked for the party, right from my very early days and including my years as a Minister and as deputy leader. In addition to this, Bertie had already promised to
grant my request, so there was no way I was going to let him away with anything else! In many ways, this encounter spoke volumes about my modus operandi — and his.

Anne Garland was very good to me. Anne — who has since retired — was in charge of looking after the Fianna Fáil
TDS
and Senators with regards to office
arrangements, equipment, staffing, and so on. She was excellent at her job and was in fact an office manager, a housekeeper and a fairy godmother all rolled into one! Anne and I had always been
friends and got along very well, and she was very sympathetic when she heard I had now lost my seat, as well as very annoyed at the way the campaign had been played out. After my conversation with
Bertie that day, I sought her out, saying, ‘I have no office, Anne — so where should I go?’ I told her confidentially that Bertie Ahern was going to make me Leader of the Seanad,
although it was yet to be announced and that she should not mention it to anyone for the time being. Anne immediately offered to try to help, saying, ‘I’ll find you an office, not to
worry!’ And she did.

When he stood down as Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds had been given an office at the top of the Ministers of State corridor. It was a big, lofty, cold office, but it was an office nonetheless and
had an adjoining office with two places for staff. So Anne said to me, ‘Why don’t you move in there, Mary, and for the time being, I’ll put a notice on the door saying
“Reserved”.’ And so this is what she did and I did. I would spend the rest of the summer in that office, mopping up the correspondence left over from the General Election, feeling
weepy and emotional at times and feeling generally that life had passed me by.

In due course, Bertie officially announced his eleven nominations, as well as my new position as Leader of the Seanad. Then followed the election of the Cathaoirleach (Chairperson) of the Seanad
by the Senators. When the first day of the assembly of the new Seanad dawned, we were all formally inaugurated. My son Feargal came to see the ceremony. After the formalities were over, I stood up
and gave the Order of Business for the day, and so my life as a Senator began. To be truthful, I had absolutely no idea how one acted as Leader of this House, but there was, and is, a very
supportive, professional and talented office team attached to the Seanad, headed by Deirdre Lane as Clerk of the Seanad and Jody Blake as Clerk Assistant. Of course Deirdre and Jody gave full
respect to the Cathaoirleach and to the Leader of the Seanad, but they were also very helpful in filling me in on what my duties would be and how it would all would operate.

And so I was able to settle in to the routine of political life again. Yes, of course, I felt diminished not to be within the Dáil at that time, but after all, I reminded myself, the
Seanad is called ‘the Upper Chamber’, and I resolved that I would use my five years there productively, and that I would make something of the position, as I had done in every other
posting with which I had been honoured in my political career. It was never my intention to stay on in the Seanad, but I did intend to use it as a stepping stone back into the Dáil. Of
course, I was no stranger to that beautiful chamber with its magnificently carved ceiling; early on in my public life at the beginning of the 1980s, I had spent two six-month periods in the Seanad,
and had relished it then as a discussion forum and debating chamber, where I was able to get used to speaking, standing up and contributing to political debate. Lo and behold, now in 2002, I was
about to embark on a most productive phase in my working life. Little did I think it at the start, but this would turn out to be the case.

Very early on, I had a huge stroke of luck, when it was confirmed that Eamonn McCormack had been approached to take up the role as
PA
to the Leader of the Seanad, and
that he had happily accepted. A young civil servant, Eamonn had worked with me when I was Minister of State for Labour Affairs. Then, when I became Minister for Public Enterprise, he came back to
work in my private office in the Department as my personal assistant, still in his civil service status. I had quickly come to rely more and more on him: it was not just that he was a meticulous
civil servant and administrator, but he was also a very valued confidante. Now, as my
PA
in the Seanad, Eamonn would occupy the adjacent office to mine. As soon as he too
had undertaken his tutorial at the hands of Deirdre and Jody, he and I settled in harmoniously enough. We were lucky that, after some skirmishing with different staff, Lisa Foran, who had also been
in the Transport section of the Department of Public Enterprise, agreed to move over as Eamonn’s assistant. So there were the three of us, all workers and all determined to do the best we
could during our time in the Seanad.

When I became a Senator in 2002, I was very much aware that down through the years there had been numerous reports on possible ways of reforming the Seanad, as well as a constant refrain from
many quarters to the effect of, ‘Is it really needed anyway?’ Accordingly, one of my first initiatives as leader was to set up a debate on reform in the House and then to form a
sub-committee which would review the workings of the Seanad and look in to how they could be revised and improved. This sub-committee was headed up by myself and included Brian Hayes as Opposition
leader in the Seanad, Joe O’Toole as head of the Independents, John Dardis as leader of the Progressive Democrats, and Brendan Ryan as leader of the Labour Party. Peter Finnegan was appointed
as Secretary to our group, and we set to work straight away.