Mary Kenny
The much-loved image of the Sacred Heart One of the great benefits of lockdown, for me, has been the experience of participating in various lectures and talks by Zoom. And I can now say that I’ve ‘attended’ Trinity College Dublin – at least vicariously, via excellent history seminars, hosted by TCD’s Centre for Contemporary History and chaired by Prof. Eunan O’Halpin.
Civil servant
Recently, a distinguished retired civil servant, Sean Aylward, gave a zinger of a talk on the theme of ‘Taoisigh Observed – a Private Secretary’s Recollection of Jack Lynch and C.J. Haughey.’ Mr Aylward, a most cordial man, gave a close-up view of having served these Taoisigh in office, as a top mandarin.
The job, he jested, was something like serial matrimony: “to love, honour and obey” each political chief, and never to damage the relationship between the government and the civil service.
Jack Lynch, he said, was a person of great empathy. He was “the guy next door”. But although he was a Corkonian, he wasn’t always treated well in his native city. Cork, he said, is a “socially stratified city” dominated by merchant princes, and Jack wasn’t accepted by that elite class. Thus, he never kept a home in Cork City, and would only stay there overnight, at the Metropole Hotel. Jack was basically quite shy, but he could charm people, especially by bursting into song – he assuaged a group of disgruntled Cork ladies by serenading them with On the Banks of My Own Lovely Lee.
Charlie Haughey was one of the most decisive administrators ever encountered, with a phenomenal work rate. He quit smoking and drinking in the 1970s, and became much more self-disciplined. He was always one for the stylish gesture and went to great pains to obtain an Irish Georgian silver teapot as a gift for Margaret Thatcher – but Sean was shocked to discover it cost more than his own annual salary! He praised both Anthony Cronin and Martin Mansergh as brilliant speechwriters during the Haughey years.
And yet Sean Aylward concluded that Bertie Ahern may have been “the most significant” Irish prime minister of the 20th Century. He really did build bridges.
Sacred Heart
Terence O’Neill became quite informal about dropping in on Irish government buildings in Dublin and on one occasion, Sean found himself riding up in a slightly juddery lift with Captain O’Neill. The sometime Northern prime minister remarked on the fact that there was an image of the Sacred Heart in the elevator, and asked if this wasn’t rather ‘sectarian’? Sean Aylward replied, amicably, to the effect that the lift itself was so crumbly, it was no harm to have a picture of the Redeemer on the wall.
This fine civil servant may also have missed his calling as a diplomat!
Complex questions and the search for answers
It’s not surprising that there are ongoing challenges to Justice Yvonne Murphy’s Mother and Baby Home commission. The whole question of who is responsible for the historic treatment of single mothers, and the difficult issue of consent in the matter of adoption, is so complex that the report itself was bound to be only part of the story.
Philomena Lee, (and other applicants), claim that the report did not accurately reflect her evidence to the commission and that it breaches her rights to fair procedure and natural and constitutional justice. These objections should be heard, recorded and considered.
The report itself admitted, in its executive summing-up: “The story of mother and baby homes in Ireland is complex and its nuances cannot easily be captured in a summary.”
People do sometimes want simple answers to complex questions. Social and economic circumstances, family constellation networks, the quite shocking invisibility of many fathers of infants born out of wedlock, the punitive attitude of some clergy, the lack of care by the state, and much else all go into the mixture.
There is also something else. As Queen Elizabeth said, in response to Meghan Markle’s accusations of royal family racism, “recollections may vary”. We all remember things differently from one another, and from the way it was at the time, too. When I examine my old diaries, incidents are recorded that I had quite forgotten, others that I recall utterly differently.
Those involved with the mother and baby homes were psychologically hurt and wounded by their experiences. They should be heard with respect and given all due process of law and human rights. But it’s still complex.
***
Sir Anthony Hopkins has become the oldest actor, at 83, to win a BAFTA award. He plays the key role in a new movie The Father written by Florian Zeller. I saw the original play twice, once in London, once in New York, and it is such a brilliant, and disconcerting, portrayal of the experience of the onset of dementia and the confused isolation that can occur in old age. A real insight into an experience of the human condition.