Just Mary (28 page)

Fianna Fáil as a party would win through at that election too, in spite of all of the doubt and uncertainty which hung over Bertie’s continued dealings with the Mahon Tribunal. It
was of course a relatively narrow victory. In retrospect, I am convinced that that would have been the General Election for us to lose and for Enda Kenny to win. Had Fine Gael/Labour got into
government in that summer of 2007 (and they very nearly did), all of the subsequent brutal budgets would have been theirs to impose and any bail-out of the country by the Troika of the
IMF
/European Central Bank/
EU
would have been carried out under a Fine Gael/Labour regime.

Three weeks after the election, on 14 June 2007, the Dáil reassembled. Séamus Brennan had enticed the Greens to come into government with us, while Bertie had done his usual
love-in with the Independents, whom he always made sure to keep onside. And thus the new government was in place. I had just turned 70 and did not at all expect that I would get any frontbench
position, junior or otherwise — and neither did I want one. I was more than happy to have at last the opportunity to enjoy being a vigorous backbencher, a position which I had not held before
because during all the earlier stages in my political career, I had either been a Minister, a Minister of State or a frontbench Spokesperson, or in equivalent roles in Opposition. One way or
another, my work in politics had been a juggling act between dealing with national issues and doing my best to try to keep my constituents in Athlone and elsewhere happy. As a frontbencher, I had
often been in the firing line. Now I was in the rearguard and able to do the firing myself. Although I never fired just because I wanted to fire!

Meanwhile, Bertie Ahern had asked Brian Lenihan to take on the role of Minister for Justice and Brian was truly delighted. As was I on his behalf — we were all very pleased that he had
come into sunshine at last. Otherwise, the financial storm clouds were gathering in earnest by this time. Bertie, however, played bravado, saying that people who spoke in sombre tones about such
matters were only seeking to wreck the economy, and so on. But, with the tribunal continuing all the while its relentless review of Bertie’s finances (or lack thereof!), the miasma of
uncertainty was over Fianna Fáil. The true extent of the country’s troubles was yet to be revealed, of course.

For the time being, however, I settled into my nice modest office over in the building ‘2000’, as we called it. Lisa Foran, who had worked with me in the Seanad office, came with me
and I was glad to keep her. She was somebody I knew and trusted, and she similarly liked and trusted me, and we worked very well together. So I was set fair for life in government again —
this time, as a sturdy, outgoing and hardworking backbencher.

I was very busy in my constituency at this time, having set up a constituency office in Athlone which was run by the very capable Breda Browne. Breda and her husband Seamus have always been
among my loyal friends and supporters. By this time, the mobile phone had for some years been proving to be a very useful tool for those in public life in particular, because it meant easy
accessibility and easy follow-up. Now that I was once more a
TD
, I made fastidious use of the system of Dáil questions, of which I would generally put forward at
least half a dozen per week, if not more. I also took a very keen interest in the debates at parliamentary party meetings. I always contributed where I felt it would be helpful and expressed my
discontent where I felt an issue was worthy of complaint. I hugely enjoyed those encounters and they remain as clear to me now as they were at the time. In the whole of my political life, in fact,
I don’t think that I missed more than one or two parliamentary party meetings, and only then because I was away from the Dáil on business of one kind or another.

When I first got back into the Dáil in 2007, I decided that I would speak on those matters of legislation in which I was particularly interested. We would have about a week’s notice
as to which legislative points were to be on the agenda for the following week, and I would select those for which I had specific ideas or direct experience. However, I didn’t ever write out
scripts or have them prepared in advance. I just rang up the Whip’s office, got my time slot and then went along to speak at the arranged time. As time went on, I was pleased to note that
more and more of whatever I said was being reported in the daily reports of the Dáil. But I was especially pleased to now have the chance to express myself freely — which I could not
do when I had been a Minister. Mind you, even then, I had never allowed myself to be too caught up in the protocol of not saying this or not saying that. But being a backbencher now gave me great
freedom and I explored it to the full.

As well as my constituency and Dáil commitments, I had another important role to fulfil within the new government: one which I was initially tentative about but which I found to be both
worthwhile and satisfying. When Bertie Ahern as newly re-elected Taoiseach was selecting his Cabinet and making his other appointments, he had telephoned me one day to ask if I would be the
Chairperson of the All-Party Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children. ‘You were a great success in Education, Mary,’ he said. ‘And I know that you genuinely
have children’s interests at heart . . .’

Of course, I was extremely honoured to be so invited, but I had inner qualms about chairing an all-party committee, knowing how difficult it can be to chair a committee of any kind. However I
duly accepted and the various parties put forward their nominees. For Fine Gael, the big guns were Alan Shatter, Frances Fitzgerald and Michael Noonan, who was appointed Deputy Chair of the
Committee; for Labour, there was Brendan Howlin and Alex White; Sinn Féin nominated Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who, notably, would not miss a single meeting of the committee.
Paul Gogarty was appointed from the Greens, while for Fianna Fáil, we had such heavyweights such as Maria Corrigan, Thomas Byrne and Seán Ó Fearghaíl. In general, it was
the Opposition deputies who were appointed to the key positions in the committee — there was a lot of flux within the Fianna Fáil ranks, but that I fully understood, as they of course
would be heavily committed elsewhere with all of their various frontbench obligations.

The date of our first meeting was 22 November 2007. I was very conscious of the huge responsibility of being in charge of an all-party committee with a mandate to bring about a consensus wording
relating to the Constitutional Amendment on Children. It was a responsibility not only because our brief was a highly important one, but also because I would be required to mediate between and
manage a number of big political personalities, while ensuring that we made steady progress on all of the key issues.

After our initial tentative meeting that November, we agreed that the first official meeting of the committee would take place in January 2008 and so in effect our work began then. We were very
lucky to have secured a fine Secretary to the committee in the shape of Ann Marie Fahey. Ann Marie was a civil servant attached to the Houses of the Oireachtas, and as such, well-versed in dealing
with various committees. She was also someone who approached her work with such professionalism and dedication that I can honestly say she was one of the finest civil servants I have ever met.

At that first meeting in January 2008, once we had set up our business stall, so to speak, I proposed that we would meet on a given day and at a given time on either a weekly or fortnightly
basis, depending on the pace of business and the agenda which we had set ourselves. I had seen the committee system at close quarters in Leinster House, and I was strongly of the opinion that much
of it was nothing more than grandstanding: members hauling in public figures so that they could upbraid them, get a couple of soundbites in the media and be in the spotlight as heroes or heroines
for a while, without very much of any concrete value being achieved. So my suggestion was that we would carry out our business in private as far as possible, except where there was a clear demand
for a particular meeting to be conducted in public. In that way, we went about our business quietly and efficiently, with nobody to bother us as we did so. It was a highly effective move, and one
we were soon glad to have taken at such an early stage.

Let me go back in time. The need for a constitutional amendment on the rights of children had been first mooted in 1993 by the then Judge Catherine McGuinness, when she headed the Report of the
Kilkenny Incest Investigation. At the conclusion of the report, Judge McGuinness put forward her belief that, until there was a change in the Constitution regarding the situation of children and
their protection, needs and rights, deplorable matters, such as the one she had just adjudicated on, would continue to erupt into Irish life. After 1993, the issue would come to the fore again from
time to time with ferocity, when a particularly terrible case of the abuse of children within their own family unit would come to light. Everybody would wring their hands and the combined call for
a change in the Constitution would be reignited — only for the issue to inevitably die down again. This is the way of public life in Ireland and something which is, I am sure, replicated
elsewhere throughout the world. When an issue is current and in the media spotlight, everybody will complain, remonstrate and demand that action should be taken. As soon as the issue disappears
from the headlines, so do the complaints. And so it was also with this contentious issue.

At his Ard Fheis speech of 3 November 2006, Bertie Ahern had pledged his commitment to a Constitutional Amendment on Children. In his successive Ministerial capacities, Brian Lenihan had drafted
the detail of the wording of such an amendment as he saw it, and now I was tasked with the job of bringing about that consensus wording.

Why was there a demand at all for a change in our Constitution with regard to children, one might ask? Weren’t children already in the Constitution? Yes, they were, but always as an
appendage of schools, of the community, of a family — never in their own right, as citizens of the land. The role of the family was regarded as paramount — and in many ways rightly so,
of course — but this meant that the rights of the family effectively trumped the rights of the child, which in turn had led to decades of timid and tentative incursions by Health Service
executives, by Health Board members, by social workers, all of whom were essentially very reluctant to intrude or intervene, even in dreadful cases where children were clearly being abused, out of
fear that in doing so they would be acting against the Constitution, and that charges could be brought against them.

This unwillingness or inability to take decisive action, even when it was clear that something urgently needed to be done, was evident in very many legal cases involving severe abuse, and in
report after report. And yet still everyone dithered and dithered about doing something, and the reason for this failure to act was because there was and is and will always be an extreme right-wing
element in Ireland which — even though the headlines scream of the shameful abuse of children — will regard any such intrusion as being against the Constitution and contrary to the
fundamental rights of the family.

Happily for me, at the very beginning of our deliberations, we became convinced that the only way forward was to ensure that we
equated
the rights of parents with the rights of children,
in other words, that we made both equal. Now, perhaps that smacks of Charlie Haughey’s long-ago law on contraception — an Irish solution to an Irish problem! But we were convinced that
it was the only way forward. It is completely right that the family should be the paramount source of care and support of the child — and that the child is best brought up against the
background of his or her family and is best disposed to make his or her way in life with the support, love and care of his or her family — but that is in the normal course of events. This
notion of what is right and correct in normal circumstances does not allow for the abnormal or aberrant, and this was what we, through our consensus wording, were set up to address.

In the course of our discussions, other key points of relevance to our central focus also emerged. One of these, about which I felt particularly strongly, was that the voice of the child should
be heard in all matters relating to court cases concerning him or her — such as, for example, where parents wished to part or were involved in acrimonious disputes for custody arrangements.
According to the child’s stage of emotional maturity and/or age, his or her voice should be heard, should be listened to and, if possible, acted upon. Of course, within the committee, but
particularly within the parameters of the legal opinions offered to us, there were huge disagreements on this issue. We were reminded, for example, of the expense of providing a mentor for a child
in such cases and other such financial considerations, but I remained very convinced that it was a strong point and one that I wanted to see implemented.

In total, the committee produced three reports. The first report, issued on 11 September 2008, set out a proposal ‘to give legal authority for the collection and exchange of information
concerning the risk or the occurrence of endangerment, sexual exploitation or sexual abuse of children’. The issue of the handling of ‘soft’ information and the need for the
vetting of people working with children had of course arisen initially out of the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman case in the
UK
in 2002, where a school janitor had been
appointed, despite having a history of initiating inappropriate contact with children at a previous school. Subsequently, and rightly so, it became regarded as essential that proper vetting systems
and as well as systems for the effective passing on of relevant information should be in place in all environments in which children were to be found. It had been thought that this item on its own
would require a constitutional amendment, but having gone through the matter fully and with the benefit of the input of our legal advisors, the conclusion was that a very detailed piece of
legislation would suffice.