Just Mary (36 page)

When I went back to Dublin the following week, I contacted Tony Kenna and told him that we had opted to raise funds for Fianna Fáil through the running of a golf tournament and
competition. It was definitely the preferable option as far as I was concerned, also because it struck me that at the time, plenty of people from all sorts of organisations —
GAA
clubs, charities, and so on — were running such events. In fact, such competitions and indeed golf clubs in themselves, had become all the rage in those days. In Athlone
alone, we had the new Glasson Golf and Country Club.

And so in 1993 we ran the first of our golf competitions. The inaugural one was held at the Athlone Golf Club and went very well indeed. So that there would be no confusion about it, the letter
of invitation we sent out to potential participants and attendees, with my letterhead, stated clearly that any proceeds from the event would not be going to the local Fianna Fáil
organisation or to me as constituency representative, but towards clearing a debt at Fianna Fáil’s national
HQ
. On that occasion, we raised about £20, 000
for
HQ
, and the event was deemed to be both a commercial and a sporting success.

From then on, we ran a golf competition each year. We built up a database of keen golfers, who were willing to participate and we kept adding to that list as time went on. Every year, the said
Tony Kenna would come down to Athlone to take part himself, and I grew very fond of him and his lovely wife. There would always be a key Fianna Fáil figure in attendance too — Bertie
Ahern, Charlie McCreevy, Brian Lenihan, Séamus Brennan, or any of the other luminaries within the party — who would come to lend their support and sometimes their own golfing skills to
the national effort. We kept this up on an annual basis, and each year faithfully sent between £18,000 and £25,000 to Fianna Fáil
HQ
, meaning that over
the entire period, we raised somewhere in the region of £200,000 for the national party through the golf competitions. My belief at the time was that all the other
TDS
and Senators were doing the same. It was only later that I discovered that lots of people were running golf tournaments, but for the benefit of their own local organisations — in other words,
that they were using the funds to forward their own political careers. I know it sounds naïve on my part now, but at the time, I was truly innocent of what was happening on this front. As
leader, Bertie Ahern ran an enormous golf competition every year for his own constituency office in Drumcondra and for his local political organisation. This set an example of course for every
other
TD
and Senator, and many thought they should do the same, until gradually there were just a few of us left running annual events for national Fianna Fáil.

I am not relating any of this in order to blow my own trumpet or boast about my virtuousness, but because I think it is indicative of the times in which we were and are living. I understand that
other political parties, such as Fine Gael, have also run golf competitions of a similar kind for funding purposes at both national and local level. Of course, nobody finds anything wrong in that.
To this day, however, I am glad that I took the golf competition route and steered clear of playing hostess at the glitzy dinners. That is a practice which has certainly been called into question
in recent years, with stories abounding of dinners being held all over the country, where large cheques were handed over — it has become the stuff of tribunals, as we know. The whole question
of political fundraising is one which I feel very much necessitates further discussion and analysis in a more general way. But in terms of our own party practices over the years, what bothered me
about my own experience was the lack of clarity in the way things were done at times, and, as I have said, I believe that this contributed to a general breakdown of social cohesion and
accountability within the party.

As this book testifies, I have been a member of Fianna Fáil for all my adult life, and indeed in my earlier years too. I have earned my living and worked hard and to the best of my
ability as a public representative, and I have always been proud to be a member of Fianna Fáil. I find it utterly outrageous that it is considered nefarious to be a member — even a
grassroots member — of our party, and as I write this today, this seems to be the common thread emerging in the media and in public discourse. I rail against the fact that there are many
writers and commentators who in my opinion could be accused of breaching the code of incitement to hatred, in the way in which they write and talk about Fianna Fáil. ‘Toxic’,
‘disreputable’, ‘underhand’: all these adjectives about us are heaped one upon another. I feel it is strongly reprehensible and grossly unfair to the ordinary men and women
throughout the country who are the foot soldiers, unpaid, of the party of Fianna Fáil. How dare people cast aspersions upon them?

It is as if over all of the years, the pent-up hatred of the success of Fianna Fáil has cut loose and commentators are giving vent to it, and in a way that completely lacks proportion or
even-handedness. Micheál Martin, our current leader, is doing his best to bring the party back up from the abyss into which we plunged after the General Election of February 2011. He has
some task ahead of him, particularly in the chilly, unforgiving political climate in which we now find ourselves.

Chapter
23

A
fter losing my seat in the February 2011 General Election, I picked myself up pretty quickly, reasoning that I had had a great run of it. It was a
consolation to me also to know that Longford–Westmeath had at least returned one Fianna Fáil
TD
in Robert Troy — unlike in so many other constituencies,
where there was no Fianna Fáil
TD
at all. While I knew that my time as a Fianna Fáil aspirant or
TD
was now at an end, I certainly did
not feel in any sense that life was over for me in a more general way.

The night I came back from my final defeat, I made up my mind that I was going to write this book, and in the days and weeks which followed, I took up my tape recorder and started to record some
of my thoughts and put some order on the various key events in my career. Indeed, during that period in February and March 2011, I was chiefly obsessed with two things: gathering material for my
book and, even more intensely, my nephew Brian and his struggle with his illness. By day, I was working on the book, at night I was hardly sleeping and waking up very early, thinking about Brian
and waiting for his next call — and there were many of those.

In mid-March 2011, just a month after the February election and all that it had brought, I was contacted by Professor Ciarán Ó Catháin, Director of Athlone Institute of
Technology, who told me that the Institute wished to confer a distinguished fellowship of life’s work on Patrick Cooney, myself and two other local business people, Dr Donald Panoz of Elan
and Stephen Grant of Grant Engineering. The professor explained that Paddy Cooney and I were being so honoured for our lives of political endeavour, and for all the efforts we had made on behalf of
the college during our years in politics. I have to say, it gave me a psychological boost to be so contacted, especially so shortly after the events of the previous month, and I was delighted to
accept this honour.

In due course, I was contacted by Dr Eoin Langan, Head of the Business School at
AIT
, who had been nominated to read the citation on me at the ceremony. He came out to
see me and we went through various points together. The date for the event had been fixed for Tuesday, 29 March. I was asked to give a list of the names of people I would like to invite to the
ceremony, and the college sent out the formal invitations on my behalf.

I asked my two sons Feargal and Aengus, with their wives Maeve and Lisa, and their children. I asked Gráinne, my friend and niece; my two sisters-in-law Eithne and Maureen;
Mícheál Ó’Faoláin and his wife Maura (who were unfortunately away on holidays and so could not attend); Hugh and Celine Campbell; Niall and Angela McCormack; John
and Mary Butler; Seán Rowland; Breda Browne who had run my constituency office in Athlone and her husband Seamus, also an old and long-standing political friend. I also asked Brian and
Patricia Lenihan, Ann and Anita Lenihan and my sister, Anne, and her husband. Anne’s husband, Seamus, was not well enough to come so they had to decline with regret, likewise Ann and Anita.
Patricia could not attend either, but to my delight, Brian said that he would be there, and I was happy to know he was coming.

When the big day dawned, I went to the college in good time, looking forward very much to the ceremony ahead. It was a solemn event, as well it should have been, bearing in mind the huge honour
which was being bestowed upon us. Paddy Cooney and I metaphorically clung to one another: both of us were, as I have said, the political nominations and we had much in common, in our love of
Athlone, our love of politics, and most of all in our work and love for the college. As I have mentioned earlier in this book, my interest in the college, and that of the Lenihan family go back a
long, long time. I had always been very proud of the fact that during his time as a
TD
for Longford–Westmeath and when the locations for Regional Colleges were being
decided at Cabinet level, my father pushed to have Athlone chosen as one of the sites. Hence the long link between me and this establishment. In an important, emotional way, my abiding love affair
with
AIT
was cemented on that Tuesday in March 2011, when I received my fellowship from them in front of my friends and family.

I was honoured that Brian came, and in fact it was to be his last full public engagement. The college was understandably also very proud of the fact that he had taken the trouble in his last
illness to come along that day. They put on a wonderful lunch buffet and we all enjoyed ourselves. I have great photographs of that special afternoon. Brian telephoned me later that day when he got
back to Dublin to say how proud he was of me.

Brian had brought with him a young man called Brian Murphy, who had worked as a researcher and speech writer in the Office of the Taoiseach, under Bertie Ahern and later under Brian Cowen. He
was a fine man whom we all held in fond regard around the Houses of the Oireachtas. Brian Jnr’s wife Patricia had thought that it would be better for him to have a companion with him for the
drive to and from Athlone, and hence Brian Murphy had come along too. I was not to know until a couple of weeks later in fact, when Brian Murphy rang me one evening to thank me for the event, that
when they had left the college, Brian said to him, ‘I’ll show you Athlone.’ It seems that they had driven all around the town, as Brian had pointed out the old River Bridge, the
Batteries, the Napoleonic fortifications, the house on Retreat Road where he had been brought up as a child, the Marist Brothers where he went to primary school, St Mel’s Park, and all the
other old familiar places. It was as if he knew it would be his last trip to Athlone, the place he always regarded as his home town.

Meanwhile, during those months of February and March, Brian had been in and out of the Dáil a couple of times. He rang me on one occasion, deeply upset because he had just learned that
Micheál Martin, the new leader of Fianna Fáil, wished to relieve him of his duties as Finance Spokesperson. Now perhaps Micheál was suggesting this out of a wish to spare
exertions on Brian’s part, but Brian did not want to give up his position like this. I told him to go and see Micheál and to say that he wished to stay on for as long as he was able to
do so. He took my advice, and evidently he won that little joust, as when the frontbench was announced, Brian was the Spokesperson on Finance. It would have been a travesty if he had not been, but
it just shows you what can be done to someone.

We continued to speak many times on the telephone, mostly on Sundays or during the week at nights. Bit by bit, I noticed Brian’s voice getting weaker. I remember discussing this with my
son Aengus one evening, and the only way I could describe it was to say that his cousin’s voice had become like that of a very old person — faint and far away, with no vigour in it at
all. I didn’t say this to Brian himself, but I knew then that he was coming to the end. Even so, I didn’t realise that it would all be over so quickly for him.

Time moved on and soon it was April, which was a beautiful, bright, sunny month with a lot of warmth. April 2011 was the summer of 2011 — we got no fine weather after that. That month was
warm, with golden evenings and for Brian it must have been particularly poignant, as he knew time was marching on. He helped his young son, Tom, who was studying Law at Trinity, and told me one day
on the telephone, ‘I’m so glad I’m at home with Tom. I’m so glad I’m able to talk with him and help him through some of his studies.’ Clare, his daughter, was
studying for her Junior Cert, and as such probably did not require much help, but encouragement and parental interest are of course always useful, no matter what stage of life one is at.