Just Mary

by Mary O'Rourke

  The legislation which led to the bank bailout was passed in the Dáil and the Seanad on 30 September 2008. In a vote in the Dáil, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin supported the proposed measures; Labour voted against. On 2 October, the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 was enacted. Brian Lenihan took that Bill himself right through all the stages in the Dáil, and then straight on into the Seanad, where he was ably assisted by Martin Mansergh. There was confusion and chaos all around, and parliamentary party meetings were in disarray. Amid the turmoil, Brian Lenihan’s was the one calm, lucid voice, as he strove to explain in plain language what was happening and make clear the serious nature of our predicament and the action which needed to be taken.

  Hot on the heels of the Bank Guarantee and all the associated chaos which ensued, came the Emergency Budget, just two weeks later. By this time we in the parliamentary party were well prepared for the bad tidings it would bring. But we also knew that it would be crucial as the first step in the massive cutting back in national spending which would be necessary to try to get our situation under control.

  One of the most memorable elements of the Emergency Budget was a seeming attack on the older population around the issue of medical cards. Heretofore, the system had of course been that anybody over the age of 70 was deemed eligible for a medical card. It was a measure which had been heralded by Charlie McCreevy in December 2000 and had come into effect on 1 July 2001: it had been blithely agreed to, even though the associated costs would clearly be horrendous. There was no doubt that some of this was quite unfair in a sense: there were some really well-off older people who could well afford their own medication and doctor visits, but who were eligible for the card anyway under the prevailing system. As soon as the news of the proposed cuts broke, there was huge public outcry. The over-70s were not having any of it! They marched in protest, occupied a disused church in Dublin and then paraded outside the Dáil: they were certainly not taking it lying down. There was uproar at subsequent parliamentary party meetings, until eventually an equitable solution and compromise of sorts was found. It was decided that if, through pension or payment, a person had a combined income of over €1,400 per week as part of a couple, or €700 as a single person, they would not be deemed entitled to a medical card. Everyone else over 70 would still be eligible.

  Although that very contentious issue got sorted out satisfactorily in the end, it left a very bitter aftertaste for many people, and the impression of a government bent on attacking first of all the older population. This was compounded by the increasingly taciturn nature of Brian Cowen’s public appearances and in his dealings with the media. Taken together with the first Lisbon defeat, the trauma of the Bank Guarantee and the brutal cuts of this most recent budget, it all added up to not a very pretty picture for Fianna Fáil at the time.

  Accordingly, there was a growing sense of dismay within the ranks of the parliamentary party. This was not the Brian Cowen we knew of old: the ‘hail-fellow-well-met’, ordinary bloke who could appeal to all elements in our society. He still was this person, of course, but it seemed that the sophistication required by his new role on public occasions and in his dealings with the media was lost on him. He was the same highly intelligent, savvy and responsive fellow as before, but somehow the sense of finesse needed was now missing.

  A contributory and disturbing tendency which, we noticed, had begun to permeate Brian Cowen’s public appearances and media interactions was the civil service ‘speak’ which peppered his discourse in such situations. Let’s say he would be out launching something or at some other kind of public function, and he was asked a question by the media — which question might have been harmless in essence if there was no big story or issue ongoing at the time — the Taoiseach would slip immediately into civil service jargon, giving a convoluted, complex answer which would require a lot of work on the part of his listeners to try to understand and to get to the nugget of relevant information.

  I for one just couldn’t make any sense of the turn his conversation and discourse had begun to take, because I had never known him to be like that before. In Athlone, we had a very great affection for Brian Cowen — whenever he visited our town, he was always well-regarded, greatly welcomed and we enjoyed basking in the neighbourly glow of having the Taoiseach living in the constituency beside us. I remember particularly how he had come to Athlone Institute of Technology to launch various of our initiatives; he also came to visit local industries and schools, and so forth. Each time, I had found him to be a good and effective person to deal with. Now, however, in that troubled period of his reign as Taoiseach, I was startled and dismayed by the change in his demeanour and indeed personality. It was as if he didn’t want to be where he was, but that he was struggling on anyway.

  All the while, Brian Lenihan was doing his utmost to steer some kind of course through the awful financial storm of the recession that was upon us, trying at the same time to remain calm and keep outright national panic at bay. After the Emergency Budget of 14 October 2008 came the Supplementary Budget of 7 April 2009, followed by another budget in December that year. I will always hold fast in my memory the image of Brian as Minister for Finance, standing there with his budget book in his hand in the Dáil to deliver that budget of 9 December 2009, setting out in his fine, measured, easily understood words what Ireland had to do now and what we could hope the future would hold for us. Of course, he said that we would round the corner, and that over the hill, there would be salvation for Ireland. In hindsight we can see that that has not come about up to now, but of course Brian Lenihan had to have words like that. How on earth could he have stood up in the House and delivered a dirge of gloom and despondency and thereby sown utter despair in the hearts of the Irish people? It was only right that he should seek to lift the spirits of the nation. But it was a very difficult task and, as I have said, one that he had to do alone.

  Around this time, I noticed that Brian Lenihan began to telephone me frequently, not to talk about the difficult decisions he had to take, but rather by way of unburdening himself to his trusted aunt, of relieving the pressures he felt building up in him. I was glad to act as a sounding board for him and to provide an older person’s perspective and just to listen too when he needed that. The routine became that he would telephone me either on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday evening: we would often speak together for over an hour. Also, during the week, even though he would be busy, as would I in my own fashion, he always found time for a quick cup of tea or a brief discussion with me.

  The thing about Brian was that no matter how busy, how strained or how tired he was, if he met me or anyone else he knew well in the corridor at work, he would always make sure to stop and talk and first exchange pleasantries and family news, before lapsing into more serious mode. I suppose in a way this lightened his load and leavened his mind, serving as a reminder of normal, everyday life, in which he too had to participate like everyone else. He also made the time to be as friendly and affable and outgoing as ever with those in the parliamentary party, so many of whom were confused and deeply riven with doubts by this point.

  Chapter 19

  DARK DAYS

  Despite all the gloomy forebodings, the budget in early December 2009 was carried in the Dáil and received a mixed, but reasonably favourable reception in the press and with the public. In the weeks which followed however, a terrible stroke of fate befell Brian Lenihan. This was his illness. By that Christmas Eve, he would already have confirmation that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer, the deadly disease to which he was to finally succumb, eighteen months later.

  People have often asked me, how did it begin? What were the first signs for Brian that all was not well? Well, it seems that it had started with a stomach ache, which he put down to having eaten something at an official dinner which didn’t agree with him — perhaps some chicken or fish or something of that nature. But when the discomfort persisted, Brian went to see his local doctor, who referred him immediately
to the Mater Hospital. The first impression there was that it might be a hiatus hernia, and a number of tests and other investigations were carried out. Forgive me for being detailed, but people do ask these questions.

  I remember speaking to Brian’s brother Conor Lenihan on the telephone on 19 December or thereabouts, and we assured one another that a hiatus hernia was not that serious and that Brian would be okay. But by Christmas Eve we knew the worst — and the worst was pancreatic cancer. I’ll never forget the utter despair which swept over the Lenihan family that Christmas Eve. All of us were devastated: Brian’s wife Patricia, his two lovely children Tom and Clare (I don’t know how much the children knew at this stage about the potentially fatal outcome of pancreatic cancer), his mother Ann, his sister Anita, his brothers Conor, Niall and Paul, and his two aunts. I felt it so keenly because as I have mentioned earlier, he was my dear friend and my dear work colleague, and our friendship went far beyond an aunt/nephew relationship. All of us spent a very unhappy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

  Things were not about to get any better. On 26 December, even as we struggled with our grief, reeling from this terrible blow, TV3 chose to tell the world about Brian’s cancer, in a startling, ‘breaking news’-style intervention by their political correspondent, Ursula Halligan. She broke the news, not just to the nation, but to the extended circle of Brian’s family and friends. Yes, we had been alerted just a day or two before Christmas, but there had been no chance for Brian and his family to tell the other very important people around them about what was happening. And for us to see it being featured so openly and graphically on our TV screens, with what seemed to us a lack of sensitivity and finer feeling — that was very hard to bear. TV3 defended themselves meanwhile, by saying that the public should know and that it was a matter of public interest. Of course we were more than aware of the need for those in public life to be accountable in such situations, and Brian had always intended to give an account of himself after he had had the privacy of spending the few days of Christmas with his family.

  Accordingly, as New Year 2010 dawned, Brian went on the News at One show with Seán O’Rourke and gave a lengthy interview, in which — I don’t use the words lightly — the sheer nobility and the hugely open and generous nature of the man was laid bare. Can you imagine how difficult that must have been for him? Yet he spoke with such grace and elegance that it appeared effortless. But of course, effortless it was not. He would have been so conscious of his wife and children; of those in his wider family circle; of his friends; of his party colleagues. He would have been so aware too of the pall, the sense of pessimism that had descended on the people of the country, on learning this news on top of all their other troubles at such a difficult time. Yet in that interview with Seán O’Rourke, Brian explained with such courage and composure exactly where the tumour lay — at the neck of the pancreas and on a major blood vessel — and that therefore he could not undergo an operation.

  There is not a family in the land that has not had some experience of cancer within their ranks or among their dear friends and their close circles. Cancer is here to stay for the foreseeable future and despite all the advances — and there have been many leaps forward in such research — pancreatic cancer remains the one whose diagnosis will strike a chill into everyone’s heart. It knows no mercy; it takes no prisoners. Whether discovered early or late, it is lethal.

  In that period immediately after Brian’s diagnosis, it seemed for me as if all of the raw and hitherto submerged grief, which was still deep inside me from the loss of Enda, had suddenly come to the surface again. I felt alone. I felt bereft. I felt as if life was coming to an end. And part of me raged. Why couldn’t it have been one of us, who already had a good few years of life behind us? Why did it have to be this 50-year-old man, blessed with a terrific intellect and so many leadership qualities, seemingly full of vigour, who had now succumbed to the malign influence of this deadly disease?

  Brian started his chemotherapy almost at once. Yet he continued all the while to put in a full day’s work every day in the Department of Finance. During that period, he came in to the Department at 7.30 a.m. and often would not leave until midnight, day by day. He would frequently go into work again on Saturdays and Sundays. There was so much to be done: so many files to read, ponder and initial; so many measures to be planned, so many next steps he had to take. Yes, he was constantly overworked and of course some people have said that if he hadn’t worked like that, his illness might not have been able to take hold. Was it the tension and the pressure of the huge financial burden Brian was struggling with, was it all of this which brought about the cancer? It is impossible for anyone to know.

  As Brian continued his treatment and kept working so hard at his job, we began to feel that perhaps, just perhaps he might be one of the very few who would not be beaten by this cancer. Of course hope always springs eternal in the human heart and I, like many, many others, hoped that somehow Brian would surmount his illness. He was undoubtedly a fighter and I felt that such a strong spirit as his might be able to stave off any further inroads by the cancer. All the while, I could only imagine how Brian’s wonderful wife, Patricia, was able, despite her own demanding job, to keep up her children’s spirits at home as they continued their studies. At the time, Tom was doing his Leaving Cert and Clare was shaping up for her Junior Cert. As an aside, I remember well how, as part of his Honours History course for Leaving Cert, young Tom decided to do a project on his great grandfather and my father, P.J. Lenihan. To that end, he came down to Athlone to meet with George Eaton, who had been Company Secretary of Gentex — the two of them had a very useful and interesting conversation with one another. As part of the project, Tom also interviewed me at a later point. I never saw the end result of the project, but I’m sure it worked out really well because he was fascinated by his subject, as well he might be.

  It was to be an enormously difficult year for the Lenihan family in 2010. As well as Brian’s continuing struggle with pancreatic cancer and its bleak prognosis, we would lose my brother, Paddy, that autumn, in the month of October. Paddy had been battling illness for some time. Years before, he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s but, with the help of a very effective regime of medication, he had been able to withstand this difficult disease very well. However, in the twelve months preceding the summer of 2010, his health had taken a distinct turn for the worst. He had developed various problems with the veins in his legs and other chronic health difficulties. Taken in isolation, none of these conditions was serious, but together and in conjunction with his Parkinson’s, it all added up to a poor state of health. At one point, Paddy went to Roscommon Hospital for about four weeks and we all visited him a lot during that time.

  The whole Lenihan family had a great affection for Paddy. As I have mentioned in the opening chapter of this book, he was the younger of my two brothers, at 15 months younger than Brian Snr. Paddy was always regarded as, not so much the wild one, but the different one — and I think it was perhaps because Brian was so serious and so much the older brother when they were growing up. I remember Paddy in those early years so well, because I was always really fond of him and he of me. After completing his schooling, Paddy had enrolled at UCD to study Agriculture. I can still recall clearly being brought as a schoolgirl to see him at one stage in the Portobello Private Nursing Home in Dublin, where he had to stay for about four or five weeks, having had a very bad flu which had turned into pleurisy. Following this bout of ill health, Paddy had seemingly decided in his own mind that he had had enough of academic life and of what he saw as the strictures of life in Ireland — and so off he went of his own accord to work in England, without telling anyone that he was so doing.

  One day, Paddy had telephoned my father out of the blue from England, to say where he was and what he was doing. As you can imagine, my mother and father had been in a fierce state of worry about him since his disappearance. Anyway, he explained to my father that he was living in a town called Workso
p in the North of England, and that he was working down the mines earning his living and was quite happy. He said he was in decent digs and gave my father the name of his landlady, who, he said, was very good to him. I remember vividly how concerned my mother was on hearing that Paddy was working in the mines, as, with his record of ill-health and pleurisy, she was sure that he would be very prone to any of the miners’ diseases which were so prevalent in the UK of the early 1950s.

  My father would often have been in England on business for Gentex at this stage, and so he decided to go up to Worksop one evening to meet Paddy. My mother was very relieved to hear after this visit that Paddy was enjoying himself, and that he liked the work and had made some good friends. The experience had also clarified in Paddy’s mind the realisation that he wasn’t cut out for academic life and that he wanted to continue with the path he was now on.