Mary O'Rourke: A lioness in Winter
Who Age And At Week Deputy Passed Of 87 This The Away Minister Government Leader Mary Fáil O'rourke Former Fianna
Last year I heard at a social function that Mary O’Rourke had gone to live in a care home where an old rival, the late Mary Bannoti, was also a resident. I have no idea what kind of interactions they had, although I imagine they were lively and friendly.
A creative dramatist might well find a lot of imaginary dialogue in those conversations over breakfast as both perused current events in the morning papers and the radio shows.
Various adjectives to describe those conversations come to mind. I would guess acerbic might be one as they compared the performances of past Titans with their current successors.
After all, Simon Harris was only a year old when Mary O'Rourke got her first cabinet seal of office in 1987 and only entered the Dáil when she left in 2011.
My title of this obituary, from a famous movie about Eleanor of Aquitaine, suggests a person of earlier power at a time when they have to fight off the impression that age and illness had diminished her authority.
Of Mary that could never be said.
Retirement never put her off her stride as she never passed up an opportunity to comment on events both on written and broadcast media as well as in a well received memoir.
She was forever a doughty and formidable woman. In her first term in the Dáil in 1983, Charlie Haughey suggested she could be spokesperson on women’s affairs. I gather she replied without words — but with a sufficiently withering look that he got the message and offered her the real meat of Education in which she, of course, excelled.
During most of Mary’s almost 30 years in the Dáil and Seanad her party was in government, and in most of those she was a minister, minister of state or government leader in the Seanad.
In both Houses, she displayed a relentless determination to earn her place in Cabinet when the opportunity arose and her leaders Haughey, Albert Reynolds, and Bertie Ahern knew it.
Once Reynolds tried to sack her but had to concede a minister of state role knowing that having her inside the tent was a lot more advantageous than enduring her on the back benches.
Ahern knew better and made her deputy leader with a very high-ranking post in Cabinet in 1997 although he had to concede the post of Tánaiste to Mary Harney which Haughey had not done to the PDs in 1987.
The 1992 election brought a record number of women, including myself, into the Dáil, a sea change to all previous elections. Mary was one of the first people to greet me in the corridors as she did with many other of the new women deputies. She gave a lot of friendly advice on what to do and what not to do in an environment that was so overwhelmingly male and, in some cases, quite hostile to women in all parties.
She herself was undoubtedly a truly outstanding parliamentarian. She was able to criticise policy eloquently without even a tiny trace of personal abuse.
There is a famous incident when her brother Brian Lenihan senior was sacked from cabinet during the presidential election of 1990. Some colleagues went across the Shannon to try assuage her fury but she told them very quickly to turn back.
When I myself failed to become a Finance Minister in 2011, she sent me a sympathetic and indeed colourful text message with an added barb at those who made that decision.
In Government, she had good stints in education and public service and a short one in health. In education, she had to endure a very restricted budget but she did develop good relations with the teaching unions which had deteriorated badly in earlier years.
As minister for Public Enterprise in the first Bertie government she promoted the privatisation of Eircom and the construction of the first Luas lines. Her decision to separate the two lines was controversial and it was to be another decade before that was reversed and the cross city line was built.
Defeat in the 2002 election was a hard blow as was the death of her beloved husband Enda a year earlier. It was then that she showed her remarkable resilience as she bounced back to become leader of the Seanad and later a TD again from 2007.
She was delighted when her nephew, Brian Lenihan Junior, became a senior minister, first in justice and then in finance. On the back benches, she was a sturdy defender of her nephew’s record during the banking crisis especially when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Personally, I always enjoyed her company. I was sorry to hear of her illness and of her death this week.
She was genuine trailblazer for women in public life and will be remembered with affection by all who knew her.