Interview with Mary McAleese: Vincent Browne

This is the transcript of a television interview with Mary McAleese by Vincent Browne. It was recorded on Monday, September 1, 1997, before Ms McAleese became a Presidential candidate and almost two months before she became President.

 

Vincent Browne: In 1984, you represented the Catholic hierarchy at the Forum for a New Ireland. It's therefore all the more surprising to read an article by you in the Tablet in which your critique of the Catholic Church and the Catholic hierarchy is in many ways as vehement as a critique you'd expect from Free Presbyterians. Why is that?

Mary McAleese: Well, the difference between the two events you are referring to, an event in 1984 and an event in, I think, 1997. There's been quite a trajectory of development and thinking in the meantime, both on my own part, I suppose, and on the part of the Church as well. It will come as no surprise to anybody to know that the hierarchy have been under quite an amount of critiquing for quite some time now, coming at them from a variety of sources.

But I think perhaps the strongest source of ongoing criticism or critiquing has come from within Christian feminism, and I count myself among that happy band of people who would regard themselves as Christian feminists.

I think that it certainly shouldn't shock anybody that there's an impatience among women in the Church, who are committed to the Church, at what they perceive as a certain unwillingness, even at this late stage, to enter into the kind of dialogue one might have expected to have been entered into by now. If you look back at the kind of things we were hearing after Vatican II, and in particular some of the comments of Pope Paul VI, who talked about the need to engage women in dialogue and who talked very openly about the fact that women's talents and giftedness within the Church had not been fully utilised and who looked forward to the day when they might be, I think that people are entitled to feel, perhaps, some sense of impatience that we've just never, we've never opened up that debate—and if anything we've watched the closing down of that debate.

You're almost contemptuously dismissive of the present pope in his efforts to apologise on behalf of the Church for the wrongs done to women by the Church.

I hope that's not true. I hope that that isn't the tone in which it was written. I don't regard the present pope contemptuously at all. I have an enormous admiration for him, but also, apart from the great impatience at his failure to engage in a dialogue that he, I think, as an intelligent man, must know is coming at him from, you know, from all areas and all parts.

You wrote in the Tablet in March 1997, “The very fact that this pope has felt it necessary to return frequently in the past few years to the subject of women tells its own story. His words are not those of a man who believes he is on the comfortable side of a debate. Far from it, they are the words of a man who is slowly realising that the citadel's defences have been breached and its once staunch defenders are a declining population.”

I hope that doesn't carry with it a hint of contempt, I wouldn't like that…

Almost a hint of hypocrisy…

On the part of the pope?

Yes.

Well, I think that what I'm saying there is that the evidence is all around him of a very, very, very loud and vocal and unhappy debate from within the Church. A widespread debate on the issue of the lack of openness that the Church is offering to women and, indeed, to laity generally, but particularly to women. And I think there is a genuine sense of impatience. People have responded, perhaps with some degree of concern, to the way in which over the last year, two years, instead of opening up the debate, we've had the declaration, for example in relation to women and ordination, a declaration that purports to be an infallible doctrine.

Now, I could see where a doctrine like that might happen, though I hope it wouldn't happen, but I could see where it might happen after a very long and detailed look at 2,000 years of sexism and the damage that has done to the Church. Particularly when this pope and his predecessor, Pope Paul VI, and indeed John XXIII, all acknowledged that there was a problem, if you like, at the heart of the Church, of sexism.

It seems to me once you acknowledge that, it's very important that you then explore it and you ask yourself the question, “well, what damage has that done, and before we make any decision about how we would go forward, let's understand where we've come from.”

I mean, it's not a question of just doing damage in the Church. It's also done damage to the wider society and done damage particularly to women.

That's correct.

You've characterised the absorption of women in that sexist culture, in the words of Yeats “a code of ignoble sedition.” What's surprising, perhaps, is that you could remain so staunchly with an institution that is so flawed fundamentally.

Of course it's flawed. It's always been flawed.

But fundamentally.

The Church has been flawed from the very earliest days. I mean, I love the Church. I love it with a tremendous fondness and a determination that I'm going to remain as fond of it as I've always been.

Why do you remain fond of an institution that has done such damage?

Well, because I look at, you know, at the founding stone on which the Church was first based, the first great apostle, Peter, and you know, he was no great shakes. The man was a coward and a liar according to the gospel, someone who denied Christ…

He was a misogynist as well.

Well, and very likely. Certainly, that probably is true. But I also look at what the Church, what is it a repository at the end of the day of, and at the end of the day it's also my spiritual home. I look at the history of the Church. There have been many, many worse epochs than this. There's been far worse hypocrisy in the Church than this. I see it growing as an institution. I see it having enormous influence globally if it can be brought off the learning curve. And there's plenty of evidence that it will eventually be dragged, screaming, up, you know, up the equal-opportunities learning curve.

And for me that's very important, because the reach of the Church globally is such that if it once made that option for women, if it once was able to admit in humility that it has been wrong, that it has played its own part and, indeed, it has not been the only agency—it certainly has not monopolised sexism. I mean, it has been a cultural feature right across the globe of many, many cultures, many religions, many. Indeed, many cultures that don't even have an apparent relationship with a strong religious ethos or ethic. And so, I would take that view, that I can patiently wait—well, maybe impatiently wait—for the Church to come up that learning curve, precisely because its reach is so global. And I think the transformative effect once it makes that option for women could be quite stunning.

You write in this article in the Tablet, “Women have observed the enormous drain of heterosexual males from the priesthood and the growing phenomena of gay priests. They are quietly asking what is happening at the core of the call to priesthood that attracts homosexuals in such greater numbers than their proportion”—in society at large, I assume.

You have to read the next bit of that to make sure that you make it clear that I was not being homophobic.

Alright…

Because I'm a very strong…

You deny being homophobic, but…

I am and have been a very strong defender of gay rights.

Maybe I will read the next bit: “These questions are not raised in any homophobic way but are among the raft of questions bobbing to the surface as we struggle to come to terms with the manifest and minds of the model of the priesthood on which the priest–mother alliance was once founded and is now floundering.”

Yes.

I don't see how that detracts from the core of the criticism that you make, that it is becoming a priesthood dominated by gay priests.

I didn't say that it was dominated by gay priests. Now, I think what's important to say is that the core…

“The call to the priesthood that attracts homosexuals in such greater numbers.”
I think it is important. I'm bearing in mind you've only read this article five minutes before we started this conversation, and it took me a very long time to put that article together, and every word is balanced and measured. What I'm trying to get across is the changed democracy of priesthood in a very, very short space of time.

All of us who lived through the 1970s and the 1980s will know of the enormous drain away and the impact that the debate on celibacy has had on that drain. We also know that—and I suppose it's a matter of public record—the concerns that have been expressed, particularly, for example, in American seminaries about the increased phenomenon of large numbers of young gay men being attracted to the priesthood.

Now, I have no difficulty with young gay men being attracted to the priesthood, but that was what I was at pains to point out there. What I am concerned about is what's wrong with priesthood that we are not also able to attract a similar number, in proportion to their…

That there is something about the priesthood that is particularly attractive to homosexuals.

I don't know, you see. And I pose the question there. I'm not sure what the answer to this perplexing issue is. I'm saying that it's an issue that people have observed, and they are quietly—and I said it there—they are quietly pondering these things and saying, “well, what direction, down what vortex is the priesthood being taken?”

Does it matter whether the priesthood is gay or not?

Well, it would matter to this extent, that I would like to see a priesthood that is a healthy priesthood in the sense of being able to attract a wide variety and across the spectrum, the human spectrum, of men and women, of all genders and all sexual orientations. I would be concerned if it was unable to do that.

Insofar as it attracts heterosexuals to the priesthood, you could argue with some justification that the people who are attracted are in a large measure dysfunctional.

Well, I don't know that to be true. And I would…

Do you suspect that? Is that not part of the point you are making?

No, I don't think so. I don't think that is part of the point that I'm making. What I'm saying is that the nature…I think it is very important that it's not seen…this is not really seen as an article about…in fact that was a small part of an overall article about priesthood. What I'm saying is that the priesthood as we have known it and as I grew up with it has changed so phenomenally and over a very short space of time. People are only beginning to acclimatise to those changes.

I mean, frankly, many people are not even sure of what those changes mean—in what direction this priesthood is going. The only questions that I'm raising there really are sort of speaking out of my own heart and of my own experience, saying what is happening at the core of priesthood. Manifestly, there is something wrong with the model of priesthood as we have experienced it.

Sounds very anti-clerical.

Well, it might, it might. I think the kind of clericalism that, the kind of clerical Church that we have come from is nowadays perceived widely as in fairly radical need of reform.

I raise that point because in April 1984, at the Lental talk in the Pro Cathedral, you said that the division between northern nationalists and loyalists was no more bitter and no more real than the gulf between Catholic and anti-clerical in Dublin.

Ummm.

The gulf between you and the Catholic Church would appear to be at least as large.

Well, I hope that's not true. As I say, I am a very committed and loving member of the Church. I think the world has moved on very considerably since 1984.…
Do you have any sense of embarrassment at your identification with a hierarchy that you castigate so seriously?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I have tremendous admiration for many of our hierarchy. I think that they operate, you know, within a system that of its nature is really very confining, and they find themselves in a kind of situation quite different now from 1984. I mean, the world has moved on very considerably, put them under enormous pressure, not least through the kind of scandals that they've endured, not least because of the growing, if you like, the mainstreaming of issues like Christian feminism. Twenty years ago, 15 years ago, many of these issues were regarded, if you like, as outside the Church rather than within the mainstream of the Church. They've now come firmly inside the mainstream, and I think the world has moved on; particularly the world of the Church has moved on quite phenomenally in the period of 14 years since then.

In Nuala O'Connor's book In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland, you're quoted as saying, as uttering another criticism of the Church: “You never hear from them that the bishops, the voice of forgiveness, the person we associate most strongly with forgiveness, was not a churchman at all but the father of a girl who died in Enniskillen.”

Gordon Wilson.

“Are they afraid to say it. I think possibly they are. I am quite happy to say this because I said it to the cardinal”—that's Cardinal Daly, I assume—“I've face to face told the bishops of it.” This is in relation to the Church's teaching on the provos.

What did you have in mind then?

It's a while back, but I think what I was saying, and I think it is probably as valid today as it was then, is that the…As I look back on Northern Ireland and as I look back on, you know, the absolutely appalling things that have happened, every atrocity produced a litany of condemnation and righteous condemnation, but the voice that said, you know, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” the voice of the gospel, was a very muted, a very, very muted voice, and it always struck me as very strange that when Gordon Wilson spoke those words, you know, it was almost as if he was speaking them for the first time, or as if they were being spoken for the first time, because they seemed to almost stop the moment. I'm sure people know that Gordon Wilson, God rest him, had no easy ride after he uttered those words. There were many people who were offended by what he said and, you know, who sent him hate mail and who told him he had no business forgiving and how dare he forgive. Literally as if he were saying these words for the very first time.

And, unfortunately, I think it has been the case that the churches in Northern Ireland have been seen more as part of the problem, in the sense that there's a perception, rightly or wrongly, that they have tended to bleed more when their own side bled—that they have been more concerned with the language of politics than to really preach the gospel emphatically, and I think that is generally true.

You were born in Belfast, of course, and brought up in the Ardoyne and experienced a lot the troubles there in the early 1970s. And then you came to live in the South, and particularly while you worked in RTÉ you were regarded as a “provo” very often.

I hope that's not true. Where on earth did you get that from?

From interviews that you gave yourself. You said that you were treated as though you were a provo.

Ah well, we are talking about a very small coterie of people who might have regarded…who might have used that epithet and, indeed, whom I eventually took to court and sued successfully. That would not have been generally or universally true. But I think you and I both know that in RTÉ at that time [in the early 1980s] it was a very, very unhealthy place in which to work. It was deeply conspiratorial, and it was an extraordinary place to work, and I must say I was probably quite an innocent abroad.

I am not now, never have been and, please God, never will be a supporter of IRA violence. Indeed, unlike most of my colleagues in RTÉ, if in fact not all of them, I had endured that violence, my parents had been victims of it. We had a business that was fire-bombed by the IRA, so why would I have any particular brief for them?
But when I came to work in RTÉ, I was surprised by the level to which, as an institution, it had come to be, effectively, in the grip of people who had very, very, very strong political views and who to some extent appeared to use their power within the media to give voice to those views—and who were very, I think perhaps tragically, dismissive of other people's views.

I suppose what I'm saying really, something that I think is generally true of Ireland as a whole, is that it was not a very good listening environment. That when people said something with which you disagreed, instead of listening and trying to understand where that person was coming from, it was always so much easier to label them—and once you've put the label on, you didn't have to deal with what they were saying, you were able to stereotype them, to dismiss it.

In this Nuala O'Connor book that I mentioned earlier, you're quoted as saying, “I'd a dreadful time”—this was when you were with RTÉ—“I'd a dreadful time with the Workers' Party, people whose idea of coming to the North was to talk to unionist politicians, whom they cultivated in a really obsequious way to talk to other Workers' Party people and then to come back to Dublin and tell what was happening in the North.” Was this something that you experienced frequently?

It wasn't all of the time, but it was certainly a significant part of the time. It wasn't just my experience, it was the experience, I think, of many of us who worked there. I think it is fairly well documented. I think, actually, you might be one of the people who also documented it very well during that time. It was very unhealthy. Very unhealthy and a very unhappy, personally very unhappy, time for me.

I have no problem with cultivating unionist politicians. I think that we should all be cultivated, and I think that part of what we urgently need in Ireland—have needed for some very long time—has been this ability to listen to each other with respect, even if we are hearing things that deeply burn us and hurt us. But in those days that was not what was happening. That was not what was happening.

You also said that RTÉ was a deeply sexist institution.

It was dreadfully so. Does that come a surprise to you?

Could you explain why you thought that?

Well, I felt it. I felt it to be so.

How did it manifest itself?

Well, I used to look around at the very talented women, and [RTÉ] wasn't a place that celebrated the gifts of women to any significant extent at that time. It wasn't very affirmative of women, and particularly now, as I look over the last ten or eleven or years—and have done quite a bit of work in the field of equal opportunities—I realise that it badly needed a dose of equal-opportunities training.

There was just a very poor consciousness, really, about the extent to which women were stereotyped, and their skills and their giftedness were kept corralled effectively. I don't think all that is generally any longer true. I think that there are some marvellous women who have made great contributions now in RTÉ, but at that time I have to say that it was a very highly sexist environment. It wasn't a very particularly pleasant environment generally, though. By its nature, I think television tends to produce prima donnas, and it also tends to produce a level of, let's say, everyday social intercourse, you know, that can sometimes get quite shrill as an environment. And you need to have a fairly thick skin to endure it.

Were you a prima donna?

Well now, the awful thing about prima donnas is that they totally, utterly lack any personal insight, so I think you'd have to ask other people about that. I, of course, would tell you no, never. It wouldn't be in my nature.

It wasn't a particularly successful period for you career-wise, was it? And therefore I wonder whether your criticisms of RTÉ now are somewhat coloured by the lack of success.

Do you think so? I've never heard that said before. I always thought that I was reasonably successful; I made my own career choices, but I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it. It's the first time it's ever been put to me in that way.

In a passage of the interview [with Fionnuala O'Connor] where you spoke about Dublin being a very shocking experience, you went on as saying, “But I went there first when Conor Cruise O'Brien was in the ascendant, and if ever anyone was a culture shock, Conor Cruise O'Brien was to me. Here was this extraordinarily arrogant man in the process of revising everything that I had known to be a given and a truth about Irish history, and he set in motion a way of looking at Northern Ireland that we are only now beginning to grow up and grow out of.

Mmmm. So I think it is important to say that that shock, if you like, was, and what I was referring to in the book was the culture shock of coming down from the North in 1975 and coming away from an environment that I really did want to escape, because we had just been through so much personal family pain, and I wanted to make a fresh start.

What was that personal family pain?

We endured a lot as a family. We had our home several times attacked in sectarian attacks. My brother, who is profoundly deaf, was very badly assaulted, a murderous attack on him. We had two gentlemen come to our door with sub-machine guns, which they emptied through our windows, and it's only God's mercy that we weren't killed. My father's two businesses were, one of them blown up, the other one fire-bombed.

Two pubs.

Yes. A young girl killed, a young mother killed in the second explosion. On the morning I was married, two of my very dear friends were murdered on the morning of my wedding. And many, many of my friends—because I lived in Ardoyne—were murdered in sectarian murders, so there would have been a litany of things. Any one of them happening over a lifetime would produce trauma and would produce stress. At that time, they were happening to so many people, and we came out of an environment, I think, which is inherently stoical, which teaches you to take things on the chin, not to articulate your pain—and particularly when other people around you were suffering and enduring much, much worse than we had endured.
I don't think that we dealt with it terribly well. I still don't think that as a community we have dealt with these things terribly well.

So that was the background. I was coming away from that, my parents had just left Belfast. They had uprooted after a lifetime there, they had uprooted a family of nine children to move to a small village to find peace and tranquillity somewhere. And I then moved on to Dublin, and I came with a great hope and expectation that—and I've said this before—that I thought I was coming, in a sense, to a spiritual and, if you like, political homeland.

Now, if that was naivety on my part—and I now look on reflection, I had no right to expect that, I had no right to expect that of Dublin—and I suppose when I came and found this extraordinary man, Conor Cruise, who, at the time when he spoke, I used to say to people “he sounds like a unionist,” and they'd say, “Oh no, he's an Irish nationalist.” And then, thankfully, in later life he obliged me by joining the United Kingdom Unionist Party, which helped enormously, but didn't give me much comfort in those days.

But wasn't the journalism of Conor Cruise O'Brien a very important antidote to the unquestioning nationalist assumptions that we lived with here for so many years?
Well, I think it's important to question and challenge, you're quite right to critique, and I don't in any shape or form say that what we lived through was a healthy analysis of Irish nationalism. I think it was very important that we did open it up, explore it, look at its mythologies, look at its language, look at the way in which, you know, it cultivated the cult of martyr, particularly the blood sacrifice. All of that which we've lived with the dreadful legacy of. So yes.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that what was being held up as, if you like, the opposing version was any nearer, if you like, a truth or the truth. But I think that we have kind of stumbled our way to a variety of versions of the truth in the meantime, and I also think about that period that it was a harsh, very harsh period. People roared at each other, you know, across barricades. It wasn't a seemly debate, it wasn't a courteous debate. It was a very contemptuous debate. I don't think ultimately it conduced to the good of the community, that kind of shrill debate.

But you are right to say, yes it is very important, and it still remains important, not to accept the myths and mythologies and the givens of the past. I mean, I think that one of the things that I've become most conscious of in the intervening years has been this need to unlearn so many of the things that we went to an awful lot of bother either to be taught or to learn.

What is the main element of what you've unlearnt?

I don't think it comes down to one element. I think it comes down to a lot of things, to many, many things—the first process of unlearning is to try and develop an ear for listening to those people who in the past one has been trained really to listen to in a very curious kind of way, because who one is politically opposed to are speaking. Even if you are not actually talking back, you are firing back almost verbal exocets in your head as they speak, you see.

Now, I think one of the things that I've tried, successfully or unsuccessfully, to do over the last number of years is to train myself to listen, to understand where they are coming from, precisely because I would like that same understanding and, if you like, that kind of same respectful listening for where I'm coming from.

Given what you and your family experienced when you were in your childhood and early adulthood, were you ever attracted to the republican movement?

No. No, I could have been [but] I wasn't, and thanks be to God I wasn't. I think perhaps that's also why the stereotyping of one's political views was so hurtful, because from a very early stage in the troubles, right from the very beginning—I mean, I was born and reared in Ardoyne, lived right through the worst of the times, right through the B Specials, the burning down of homes of people who lived beside me, so there was a lot to be provoked by, there was a lot to be hurt by. And when you're 17 or 18, the passions run high. Naturally, it is attractive to be drawn into that, if you like that vortex of violence. And I'm always very grateful that I wasn't, though a number of people whom I knew and knew well were, but I wasn't.
I think one of the reasons for that was that I always had—first of all, I came from a very prayerful home, I came from a home where, you know, religion, and not religiosity but religion, actually did play a part and where the gospel meant something. And so that side of me was fairly well developed, if you like. The spiritual side of me was fairly well developed, and that's the side that I think kept me, that acted as a kind of cantilever to the, you know, the pull of violence.

Are you still a nationalist, or has that process of unlearning led you away from nationalism?

No, I wouldn't say it's led me away from nationalism, but what it has done, though, is revise the rather crude early perspective that I would have had on nationalism. I would still regard myself and would define myself as an Irish nationalist, yes. And then, beyond that, though, when I talk about or when I would talk about, for example, the ambition that is at the heart of Irish nationalism, is for an Ireland that is united. Now, when I was growing up that was a very crude kind of term, and when I realised that the one and a half million unionists who live in Northern Ireland identified that simply as meaning that they would be totally overwhelmed; that their viewpoint would simply be subsumed, would be ignored, it would be, you know, wiped away—I think the process of unlearning and the process of redefining nationalism for me has meant that I now come to the issue of where we're up to, for example, in Northern Ireland as we approach talks, which we hope will lead to consensus, that I have a very open view now about what shape Ireland might take for the future. I'd be very open about the kind of consensus that might come out of a dialogue between nationalists and unionists in Ireland and Britain as to the future of this island.

The old, if you like that old image, that old and rather crude concept of a united Ireland, the words, the concept that is raised by that image, I think, no longer fits the profile of where a modern Ireland would like to go to. I think that we have to be open to the possibility that what we're looking at is quite a complex set of arrangements.

That complex set of arrangements would inevitably involve a respect for other values and of other ideals. Have you in political positions you've taken on issues, such as divorce and abortion, been sensitive to those considerations.

I'm not too sure to what extent they play into the issue of Catholic versus Protestant or nationalism versus unionism. Funnily enough, I don't regard those, fundamentally, as two issues that touch on the issue of nationalism and unionism. I know they can be perceived as such, because of what is perceived as being the confessional nature of the Irish state, but, for example, even in Northern Ireland I was deeply conscious of the fact that in relation to divorce we never followed the British. The law that applied in Great Britain was always aeons further down the line than in Northern Ireland, because there was a spectrum of thought. By and large, Northern Ireland tended to be much more conservative and still, indeed, is much more conservative on both those issues than would be Great Britain generally, and on those issues was much closer to the spectrum of thought that existed in the Republic. I think these are issues that are global; every community, every society faces them and deals with them and deliberates upon them with the same passion, and exactly the same argument and the same shift of focus as we have experienced here.

Except that on the issue of divorce, for instance, the rhetoric of the Catholic Church during the divorce referendum, of the Catholic hierarchy during the divorce referendum, was very much to the effect that their version or their view of the common good is something that ought to be embraced by society as a whole, irrespective of minority views and what might be termed pluralities.

Well, I think you'd have to address them on that. I didn't write their scripts for them and, thankfully, that's not a position that I would have ever taken myself; so I think that's a matter that you'd really want to address to them.
You flirted with Fianna Fáil for quite a long time. Indeed, you were a candidate for Fianna Fáil.

You call that flirting; now, you must have confused this expression “flirting.”

How would you describe it?

I joined Fianna Fáil.

Held hands…

Held hands?

You ran for the party in 1987 in Dublin, and in the run-up to that you described Eamon de Valera as the greatest visionary Ireland has had.

Mmmmm.

That was very far-fetched.

Was it? Sure, we all say those sorts of things in a moment…

When we're looking for a nomination…

…In a moment. May I say, I do have great admiration for Eamon de Valera.

Enormous admiration for him.

Is it still your view that he was the greatest visionary Ireland ever had?

I think he was a tremendous visionary, yes. But Ireland…I mean, it depends on your time scale, you know, it really does depend on the time scale. There are new visionaries will have emerged, but I wouldn't take from him. No, I would not take from him what he achieved, and leaving it back I think one of the difficulties—isn't it, you know, ipso facto—looking back over history [is that] we're a very cynical lot, and we've an awful habit of looking back over people's, you know, even the most gifted of people and looking straight for the clay feet. I think, taken in the round, yes, he was a visionary and, yes, he made an enormous contribution…

You also said around that time about Charles Haughey, “Yes, I do admire the man, and my husband, Martin, is a relentless Charlie fan. I admire in him predominantly his staying power and ability not to cave in in the face of the relentless pursuit of him by the media and, indeed, from within his own party. I also have a very deep admiration for anyone whom the British government fears, and I'm sure they fear Charlie.”

Mmmm.

Do you now have the same opinion of him?

Well, now. We're all an awful lot older and an awful lot wiser, Vincent, you and I both, and I wouldn't take from him his innovative skills in those days when I first came to Dublin. And one of the things that I found interesting about him was the fact that many of the things which were innovative in terms of legislation had his stamp on them somewhere, and that was intriguing and interesting and I wouldn't take that from him. But we all know now what the story was, a story that I certainly didn't know anything about until the McCracken tribunal, any more than you or anybody else.

You didn't know in 1984 that his lifestyle was such as not to be conceivably affordable by the income he was getting as a public representative?

Well, how would I have known that? How would I particularly have known that?

Everyone in the country had known that.

Did they? And what did you do about it as well? You were working in the field of journalism, like myself, at that time. You know, some of these things are tediously silly, really, Vincent. I mean, a lot of people asked questions at that time and, with the greatest respect to those people who now look back, I mean I would have to say to you about that time, there were a lot of questions around at that time, and my view as a lawyer would be very, very simple. If people have allegations to make, let them make the allegations and let them stand over them.

There were hundreds of people at that time who made those allegations who never at the end of the day saw them through to the end of the line. And it seems to me extraordinary looking back on those days now, now that we know the story, the story's actually beyond credulity, it is so dreadful, and it shows, if you like, such a contempt on his part for people like me, actually, and for other people who did have a faith in him and who did believe that when he talked about his vision for Ireland and that when he did defend the nation and when he was essentially one of Ireland's first citizens, and, when you think about, one should have and would be entitled to have both a respect and pride in one's politicians—and that when I look back on that and see how people like me were essentially duped.

Yes, one does feel very foolish, not surprised, not shocked, but one feels very, very foolish. But I'd have to say that it wasn't my function then as a very small underling in a party. I didn't know the man hardly at all, I'd barely met him, maybe I saw him once or twice, maybe, in my entire life. There were people who were around him who were very, very close to him, there were institutions of the state, there were tax collectors, tax inspectors, all sorts of people who would have a role to ask the very questions—I think you're, you know, you're posing now—and more importantly to take those tracks and to track right down to the very end, and they did not do that, and I think those questions still remain open. It just strikes me as extraordinary that we only now have this appalling insight into this man and to the, I suppose, to the strange nature of this man, this very twisted nature, and we only have that because of a private family dispute that went awry. Not one single organ of the state, not one single journalist, not one single politician, not one single person who was in a position to alter the course of history actually did it in relation to Charlie Haughey. It was only almost by, you know, by happenstance, by accident or coincidence, that he managed to be found out before eventually death got him.

Mary McAleese, thank you.