0:06

Welcome

0:06

to another episode of the Restist Politics

0:08

leading with me, Alistair Campbell, and

0:10

without Roy Stewart who's having day off

0:13

or holiday or something, I don't know, preparing

0:15

to attend the coronation with his friend, the king. But

0:18

I'm delighted to be joined by, I think

0:21

you're the second former president

0:23

that we've had on the podcast,

0:26

Mary McElise, two term

0:28

president of the Republic of Ireland.

0:31

Mary, I don't know where to start with you because there is an awful

0:33

lot to get through. I think that

0:36

we get quite a lot of criticism for

0:38

not having enough women

0:40

on the leading podcast and

0:43

there is a pretty obvious reason for that, which

0:45

is that through time and

0:48

still today there are far more male

0:50

leaders than female leaders. I

0:53

think still, are you still unique as

0:55

being the, you're definitely the first woman

0:57

president to succeed a woman president. You

1:00

followed Mary Robinson. But

1:02

still leadership is very,

1:04

very male and you've talked a lot

1:06

in the past about misogyny within Irish

1:09

society, within culture more broadly, within

1:12

the church. So I want

1:14

to start with that really, your take on

1:17

women in leadership.

1:18

Why so few? How do we get more?

1:22

We're talking at a time when someone

1:24

might come straight back at us and say, well, you know,

1:26

you've been the president of Ireland, you know, you

1:28

got to be a pro vice chancellor of

1:30

the university. We're sitting

1:31

in yesterday at a women in

1:33

business conference in Belfast.

1:36

I looked down and there was the

1:38

head of the civil service, a young woman, the

1:41

chief justice of Northern Ireland, a woman. I

1:44

looked

1:44

and I found Louise Richardson, an old

1:46

friend of mine who was the first

1:48

woman vice chancellor of Oxford.

1:50

But actually we can also

1:52

say of each of them, they were firsts, you know, and

1:56

that itself is telling. There is a

1:58

generation coming through now.

1:59

thankfully, with the advent particularly

2:02

of 3 second level education and

2:04

the massification of third level education

2:07

which women have really taken advantage

2:09

of. Women have seen education as

2:11

the conduit to much

2:14

more broadly opportune

2:16

laden lives than the lives that were previously

2:19

available to them which were corralled

2:21

into narrow very often domestic

2:23

spaces or low grade

2:25

job service type spaces

2:28

where they were never expected to shine

2:29

or certainly never expected to outshine

2:31

men and certainly never expected to

2:33

be outpromoted in favour

2:36

of men. So there's been a huge cultural

2:38

shift in terms of women preparing themselves

2:41

to have the skills, the qualifications

2:44

and I think not just the heft

2:46

and the momentum but the personal courage because

2:48

it does take personal

2:49

courage in many ways to

2:52

invent yourself as a woman who

2:54

is going to areas of life

2:56

whether it doesn't matter what profession it is because there

2:58

are very few of them that were not dominated

3:01

by men in some way or another and part

3:03

of the difficulty was and I find it certainly go

3:06

becoming a

3:07

barrister and then a law lecturer and then

3:09

a president, people have this notion

3:11

that if you speak at all about

3:13

the subject of women, women are strident.

3:17

Men are articulate but women are strident and

3:22

a thing that is often missed in the telling

3:24

is we come from

3:27

cultures in which are

3:29

deeply, I mean really deeply embedded attitudes

3:31

about

3:33

what is appropriate for men and what is

3:35

appropriate for women. So just on that you talk about

3:37

the culture and of course Ireland has got

3:39

this very very strong tradition of Catholicism

3:41

and the power of the church and you said

3:43

some extraordinary things about the church in the past. You call

3:45

the Catholic Church an empire of misogyny.

3:48

It still is. It is a noble carrier

3:50

of the toxic virus of misogyny.

3:53

It has never even tried to seek a cure though

3:55

it exists. Its name is equality. Correct.

3:57

And you think that is still the case? Oh, utterly still the case.

3:59

I mean the Catholic Church is probably

4:02

a classic example. It is not the only faith

4:04

system regrettably in the world

4:07

that has a culture of embedded misogyny. There

4:09

is a tendency, I think in

4:11

the secular media I'd be as guilty of it as anyone

4:13

else, to rather dismiss

4:16

religion as passé. It's yesterday's

4:18

world. Who bothers with religion? And

4:20

to some extent I think that is true. Young people

4:23

are walking away from religious practice

4:25

precisely for

4:26

those reasons because they find it a hostile

4:28

world. Young women in particular. But

4:30

the truth of the matter is, I mean five out

4:33

of seven people on our planet identify

4:35

with someone of the world's major

4:37

religions. You mentioned the Catholic Church to

4:39

which I belong. One in six

4:41

people in the world are notionally

4:44

Catholic. What's your relationship with the Catholic Church?

4:46

I remember the Catholic Church. But why if you

4:48

see it as this?

4:49

Oh because I'm darned if I leave it and be

4:51

allowed then to be ignored. Oh no

4:54

no no, I mean what must stay?

4:56

You stay because also I believe

4:58

in fairness that it has...

4:59

But is it not about believing in God? Well

5:01

fundamentally that is for me what it is. But

5:04

let's part that for just for the moment. Part God. Let's

5:07

part God for the moment. And let's

5:09

talk

5:09

about this extraordinary structure built

5:12

up over centuries which is

5:14

today the biggest NGO in the world. There

5:17

is nothing to equal the Catholic

5:19

Church in the world in terms of its NGO

5:21

status. It has 200,000 schools.

5:24

It educates some 70, 80 million children.

5:27

It is a huge key influencer

5:29

of attitudes and laws

5:31

and that's the important

5:32

thing. Laws and structures. Good

5:35

for good and bad across five

5:37

continents. And there

5:39

is good in it but there is also bad in it. And part

5:41

of the bad is if you like the breaking

5:44

mechanism

5:45

that it is for women

5:47

right across those five continents. Because the

5:50

attitudes that it takes with it

5:52

across those five continents into its

5:54

schools, into its welfare system,

5:56

into its orphanages, its leprosaria. All

5:59

of which are wonderful.

5:59

institutions, they also have

6:02

a dark side. Well, we

6:04

know the dark side in terms of clerical child

6:06

sex abuse, we know the dark side in

6:09

terms of the appalling use of corporal

6:11

punishment in institutional care, we

6:13

know all that. But what we don't really

6:16

know is the more ephemeral, the stuff

6:18

that we can't, if you like, set

6:20

a commission to measure. And that

6:23

is the embedded attitudes that

6:25

go from generation to generation

6:27

that outcrop in law.

6:29

Just where we are sitting right now, if

6:32

I look across the street from where we are, that's where

6:34

I was educated as a lawyer in the law

6:36

school here at Queen's University. And

6:39

we had among our

6:41

first year,

6:42

we learned Roman law, which was

6:44

fine, Roman law, most interesting.

6:48

And then we went straight from Roman law to

6:50

the common law. And what

6:53

was missed, and it may very well have been

6:55

missed for political reasons, was

6:58

canon law. Because of course, it's

7:00

the connection from

7:02

Roman law to canon law to the

7:04

common law. The English common law

7:06

that I grew up with was largely

7:09

historically based on canon law. Why

7:11

was Henry VIII in trouble with the Pope?

7:13

You know, did nobody ever ask themselves that question? Because

7:16

of course, he was subject to the canon law

7:18

of the Catholic Church in relation to marriage, but

7:21

not just marriage. It was in relation to

7:23

many things. When I was a young

7:25

lawyer, criminal responsibility

7:28

started at the age of seven. That was

7:30

embedded in our common law, and eventually

7:32

in our statute law. Where did that come from?

7:35

That we canon law. So I

7:37

decided whenever I ended my time as

7:39

president, that I'd become a canon lawyer,

7:42

because I had the temerity, the temerity

7:44

to believe that there was so

7:46

much wrong

7:47

with the church and terms. Do we have to call you

7:49

anything special now that you're a canon lawyer? Not

7:51

really, no. No, you can't call me Mrs. Canon

7:53

lawyer, it doesn't sound right. But I did make

7:56

it my business precisely because, I'm

7:58

a scholar, I'm an academic, that's what I'm

7:59

always been all my life, I'm an academic, but

8:02

in civil law. So I decided

8:04

when I lived in Northern Ireland, I lived in a hugely

8:06

dysfunctional society in which

8:09

religion was a deeply, deeply embedded

8:12

perspective. And it was a Christian

8:14

religion in which Christians hated

8:16

each other basically.

8:17

Now one of the young producers who is

8:20

clearly not a person of faith and doesn't

8:22

understand this, just scribbled me a note saying,

8:24

can you ask her to explain what common law

8:26

is?

8:26

Well, you see, there you go. Exactly. You

8:29

know, that's a really good question. Well, canon law is

8:31

the legal architecture of the Catholic

8:33

Church, built up over 2000 years. And

8:37

it was because the Catholic Church was a universal

8:39

church, hugely influential throughout

8:41

the world, and indeed is the only

8:44

faith system in the world to

8:46

have permanent representative status at

8:48

the United Nations.

8:49

Now for you. Sharia doesn't

8:51

have that, is it? No, it does not, absolutely

8:54

does not. So the Catholic Church

8:56

developed a system of laws. Essentially,

8:58

it started out as ways of solving problems.

9:01

I mean, the church founded by Christ wasn't five

9:03

minutes old when the apostles and disciples were

9:05

fighting as if they all lived in Northern Ireland or

9:07

their lives. And it took somebody

9:10

to solve the problems. And as every problem

9:12

was solved with an answer, each of those

9:14

answers essentially became a law. And then

9:17

they started to aggregate, you know, and

9:19

suddenly there were bunches of them. And then they put

9:21

them together, you know, in cannons.

9:24

And then eventually

9:24

after 2000 years

9:26

in 1917,

9:29

they codified them. And that was hilarious

9:31

because when they codified them, they realized

9:34

what a lot of baloney was in there. Swaths

9:36

and swathes of laws about, you

9:38

know, what colour of a band

9:41

was worn by certain types of Monsignors.

9:44

Green for this crowd and pink for this crowd

9:46

and purple for the other crowd. And where did Christ

9:49

say that? Where exactly was that? So all of that.

9:51

Do you know, are you sorry? Now you asked about common law. So

9:54

things like

9:56

priests were to avoid women because

9:58

we were.

9:59

Objects of suspicion. Now

10:02

here's the bad news. I mean, I'm 72 years old

10:04

and this is a real killer. Once you get to 40,

10:07

you're no longer an object of suspicion. No,

10:09

you can't say that, mate. You can't say that. No, that's

10:11

true. Up to 40, you're an object of, excuse

10:13

me, are you a Catholic? Is this the canon law? Are you

10:15

a Catholic? Are you arguing canon law with me now? Oh, is

10:17

that the law? Is that the law? Up to 40.

10:20

That was the thinking, that up to 40,

10:22

you were an object of suspicion after 40, really.

10:24

You were pretty much deadbeat. What was the life expectancy? You were losing

10:27

your teeth and your looks, you know. What was life expectancy

10:29

back then? So you just had

10:31

a couple of years of non suspicion. Yeah,

10:34

so I've had a long, long years

10:36

of being non suspect,

10:38

but then it's very suspect for other reasons. You've

10:40

said some strong stuff in your time.

10:43

When they set up the Synod of Bishops on the family,

10:45

you said 300 elderly, celibate

10:48

men who've never changed a nappy in their lives are not the

10:50

people that decide what's a family.

10:51

Yeah, or about family life. Or

10:54

about how we as parents should

10:57

instruct our children in Christian

10:59

family life. These elderly

11:00

men that you would run into

11:03

in your time as president. Correct. What

11:05

did they make of you? Oh yes, well,

11:07

I had a dreadful row with Cardinal Connell. We

11:10

were made friends funnily enough, but we had terrible rows

11:12

because shortly after I became president,

11:15

I took communion in a Protestant

11:17

church. And you see, God is

11:19

sitting up there in heaven, you know, and he's

11:21

watching very carefully who

11:23

goes into Protestant churches, who goes into Catholic churches.

11:26

And if a Catholic president went into

11:27

a Protestant church, having

11:30

promised to be a president for everybody and

11:32

to respect everybody and to respect

11:34

all faiths and none, and having been invited

11:37

by my Protestant neighbors to this service

11:39

and offered their communion hospitality,

11:42

he absolutely,

11:43

apparently God did not like the

11:45

fact that I took communion. Do you think we

11:47

should insert that there is an ironic tone to your

11:49

voice, just in case some people are taking that

11:51

at face value?

11:52

Really? Okay, right. Well, if they

11:54

are, God help them. Because Cardinal

11:57

Connell, he took out, he went

11:59

mad. said terrible things. And

12:01

he also then said, of course, that the Church

12:03

of Ireland communion, the Protestant or Anglican communion

12:06

might otherwise be known, was a sham. A

12:08

sham, really. These are people

12:10

who are worshipping the same God he believes in, who

12:13

go to church in the same way that he does. And

12:15

somehow,

12:16

because they give me

12:18

communion, offer me their Eucharistic hospitality,

12:21

that I'm engaging in a sham. So anyway, there

12:23

was a fierce roy over that altogether. But

12:26

okay, listen, so you've got this incredibly powerful

12:28

church, right, in the sense of a powerful church.

12:30

And yet, Ireland on

12:32

all of these issues you've talked about has moved

12:35

immeasurably.

12:36

Yes. And who has moved? The people of God have

12:38

moved. Because these are people who are very

12:40

often still going to mass or still connected to God

12:43

and spirituality in some shape or

12:45

form. A lot of them, I admit, very turned

12:47

off by the church because of misogyny,

12:50

homophobia, and of course, the big scandal.

12:53

And of course, the first scandal was the scandal

12:55

in relation to what we call the Humanae

12:58

Vitae, which outlawed the use

13:01

of artificial

13:01

contraception against the

13:03

advice of Catholic theologians

13:06

and Catholic doctors. And that

13:08

was at the time when

13:10

we had the beginnings of the

13:12

massification of second level education, the

13:15

confidence that comes from education,

13:17

and importantly, the critiquing

13:19

skills that come from education.

13:22

Before that, you had a population who sat

13:24

in the pews and were told what to think. Now

13:26

that was not just reversed,

13:29

but really, there was a tsunami

13:31

of education, discussion.

13:34

In Ireland, we are a people who talk,

13:37

talk,

13:39

and interestingly, we talk intergenerationally.

13:43

You have to, you know, because you're in the house with your granny

13:45

and your mummy. And out

13:47

of that came a

13:50

complete change of view.

13:53

Thank God people can't change their views. And if

13:55

ever there was an example

13:57

of that, the profundity of that

13:59

as a result,

13:59

reality of the human condition, the capacity

14:02

to change Ireland is it? Great.

14:05

Okay. Let's just take a break.

14:09

You mentioned homosexuality. So,

14:12

and you have a son who's gay. Yes. Three

14:14

children. Three. Two girls and a boy. Two girls,

14:16

yeah. So if you go back a couple of generations,

14:19

how difficult would that have been for Ireland? And

14:22

what's the situation now for gay

14:24

people in Ireland? Well, it's interesting. I know you've got a gay t-shirt,

14:26

which is again, a sign of an advance.

14:28

Absolutely wonderful. I got involved

14:30

in campaigning for gay rights as a human rights lawyer

14:33

in 1975. Before? Ten

14:35

years before my son was born. Yeah. I mean, some

14:37

people think that I coached him to be gay from the day he

14:39

was born, you know, you will be gay, you know,

14:42

but I didn't actually, but

14:43

I didn't know when he was about seven that he was gay. Yes,

14:46

but I started, I started campaigning for gay rights back

14:48

in 1975. Why? Because I'd

14:50

been, I knew nothing about, I was in this university,

14:52

I never heard the word gay. I didn't know there were any

14:54

gay people when I was at university. I thought everybody around

14:56

me was heterosexual, but I didn't even answer,

14:59

I didn't even kind of question that because

15:01

just nobody talked about it. And then

15:03

in 72, I went to America to

15:05

work on a J1 visa in San Francisco.

15:08

And my boss in the place that I was working

15:11

in was the most gorgeous gay man, and he was handsome

15:13

as well as one of gay men. And one

15:15

of my colleagues took me aside and said, you

15:17

know, don't be falling for him because he's gay. And I went,

15:20

and it was really nice. He's lovely. She said, no,

15:22

no, no, no. What I mean is, because I

15:24

had the word meant nothing to me.

15:25

You thought he was happy. I thought he was just a happy person.

15:28

So my crush on

15:30

him was crushed.

15:31

And I

15:34

then, but he and I became great mates. And

15:37

because I was fascinated. I never heard of this stuff before.

15:39

And I was fascinated. And then I learned from him because

15:42

there was a, in fairness, there was a kind of

15:44

an aura of sorrow and darkness

15:46

that hung over him for all that he was a gay person

15:49

in every

15:49

way. Was this around the kind of Harvey Milk time? Correct.

15:52

And so he taught me about how

15:54

he'd been excluded by his family. Like

15:57

me, he was Catholic and he

15:59

told me about, you know,

15:59

how oppressed he felt both in family

16:02

terms and his family had effectively

16:04

thrown him out because they believed the

16:07

church is teaching and they believed a lot

16:09

of the ambient views about homosexuals

16:12

that they were evil. So I remember coming

16:14

back thinking like this is a human rights issue,

16:16

this is ludicrous. So at the first opportunity

16:19

when I came to work in Trinity College one of the

16:21

first friends I made was a very

16:23

well-known gay senator David Norris.

16:26

Oh yeah. The

16:27

guy who ran for president. Yeah exactly. Did

16:29

he run against you? No. Oh gosh no. Later.

16:32

Later. Later. We were mates.

16:33

David came to me in the law

16:35

school one day looking for advice because at that time

16:37

homosexual conduct was criminalised still

16:40

in Ireland. So what were we going to do? So

16:42

anyway a bunch of us set up the campaign for

16:44

homosexual law reform, went to the European

16:46

Court of Justice Mary Robinson, god bless

16:48

her, she took that case pro bono and

16:51

we won in the European Court of Human Rights sorry.

16:54

And anyway we won that case and then

16:56

thankfully a woman minister

16:59

for justice, Maura Gagan Quinn,

17:02

she changed the

17:03

law. But way back in I think

17:05

about 1979 or 78 I

17:08

was the first person on radio

17:10

to suggest in answer to a

17:13

question

17:13

from a journalist that the campaign

17:16

you know probably would end up with looking

17:18

for the right to gay marriage and

17:20

this was regarded as a subject of great

17:23

mirth. But I said well of course I mean that's

17:25

a natural

17:25

corollary of where we're going if we're

17:27

talking about equality

17:28

of citizenship. And how

17:31

ridiculous it seemed at the time as both

17:34

the best way of gauging that is that my mother did not

17:36

bring me up to give out about what

17:38

I'd said. Even right up to the campaign

17:40

my mother would have been saying that she'd have to follow

17:42

the church luckily she didn't have a vote anyway. No

17:45

and she also have a gay brother and

17:47

in fact in fairness to my father and mother when he announced

17:49

that he was gay around the table some 40

17:52

years ago my father said are you gay

17:54

son my father my brother said yeah I am he said that's

17:57

grandson aren't you still our son and what

17:59

we what what

17:59

was it what we're having for dessert? And that was it, it was

18:02

over. That was it, it was over. There was never a word about

18:04

that. But what if, so your brother and your son, what

18:06

experience have they had of homophobia? Look,

18:08

they've experienced

18:09

it every which way, every which

18:11

way they've experienced it. And because

18:13

it's still in the ether, unfortunately.

18:16

On the other hand, they live through

18:18

times now where they know from

18:20

the referendum and the Republic that

18:23

at least 66% of

18:25

the people they meet on

18:26

the streets are on their side. And

18:29

that's a wonderful thing.

18:30

That's a wonderful thing to walk down your street,

18:33

hand in hand with your partner, knowing

18:35

you're not gonna be spat at or hit. But we still, like

18:37

every place has, the act of homophobic

18:39

violence, the picking off of the low hanging

18:42

fruit, the young gay guy who's coming out of a bar

18:44

on his own at night, who's gonna get kicked

18:46

by some mother. Still goes on. Yeah, so that still goes

18:48

on, unfortunately. And because

18:51

again, it's got to do with embedded

18:53

practices. A lot of this stuff,

18:56

particularly sexism and homophobia, has

18:58

become what I would call privatized now. In

19:00

the past, people could articulate it openly

19:03

because they thought that

19:04

it was, that it was perfectly okay

19:07

to say it. Now, we don't accept

19:09

that language, but it still goes on in

19:13

what I might call little hermetically sealed

19:15

bubbles where people feel safe. Just

19:17

in the same way that sectarianism did,

19:21

was hothoused here in Northern Ireland in

19:23

elitist

19:23

groups. They wouldn't say the

19:25

same thing outside those groups that

19:28

they would say inside them. But the fact

19:30

that it was said inside gave those toxic

19:32

ideas legs.

19:34

Okay, and I wanna go right back to

19:36

your childhood. I know that the

19:38

Irish constitution allows for anybody born in the island

19:40

of Ireland to become president, but it still strikes

19:43

me as quite extraordinary that you were born in Northern

19:45

Ireland, grew up here,

19:47

mainly educated here,

19:49

and yet went on to become president

19:51

of Ireland. So I'd be quite interested in that. And also just the other

19:53

point in your childhood is your sense

19:56

of the troubles. And any

19:58

of the experiences that kind of...

19:59

of really experience of what was happening

20:02

here. Well, I grew up in Ardoin, one of the most

20:04

deprived parishes, areas in

20:06

Northern Ireland.

20:07

It is the area with the greatest

20:09

incidence of sectarian killings

20:12

bar none. So you're a Catholic living

20:14

in a Protestant area? Well,

20:17

Ardoin is very often described as a Catholic,

20:19

Republican, nationalist enclave. I

20:22

grew up on the other side of the street. If

20:24

you've ever driven up that road, the Cromden Road, you will see

20:26

that there's a huge wall,

20:27

massive big wall. That wall didn't

20:29

exist in my day, but it might as well have, because

20:31

there was the wall in people's hearts and

20:34

minds. But I grew up on the Protestant side,

20:36

which meant that I'd only ever Protestant friends, apart from

20:38

my

20:38

school friends. So that was good, actually,

20:40

because I also had

20:43

a great understanding of

20:46

where my Protestant friends were coming from,

20:49

what they thought of politics, how they loved

20:51

the Queen. You cut me in. In our house, you went through

20:53

the

20:53

front door, and there was the picture of John the 23rd and

20:56

John F. Kennedy. I walked across

20:59

the street and in through the door, and

21:01

there was the picture of Her Majesty, the Queen. So

21:04

I knew that. And I also knew

21:06

that some of my neighbours

21:08

had very strong connections to the British Army. We

21:10

never did in our family. My grandfather

21:12

had been in the IRA, had been

21:14

in ADC to de Valera. But

21:16

I think probably what marked me

21:18

off from many of my

21:20

colleagues and friends at the time was

21:22

my father was from the west of Ireland, and

21:25

he was from Ruskommen in the west of

21:27

Ireland, where I now live. So I

21:29

had another hinterland to draw from.

21:32

And we would go there as soon as school

21:35

closed. You go out in Northern Ireland. It

21:37

was a pretty awful place to grow up in, let's face it. As

21:39

a Catholic, it was a miserable place. The police

21:42

force didn't represent us. The government didn't represent

21:44

us. The judiciary didn't represent us. They all

21:46

pretty much were down on us. The

21:49

system was down on us. We were aware

21:51

of that. So, you know, in every hand's

21:53

turn, my father got us out of here. And

21:56

my father came here for work because

21:58

work was very

21:58

scarce. He came here at 14. years of age

22:00

with his first pair of shoes. He said

22:02

he was 20 before they fitted him because his

22:07

father went into town and bought them without

22:09

my father being with him.

22:12

My grandfather

22:12

at that stage and my grandparents were living in a small

22:15

little cottage in the west of Ireland and the electricity

22:18

came down their road. My grandfather wouldn't have it

22:20

because it was the devil's own cursed instrument

22:23

and secondly it wouldn't catch on. Oh

22:26

my lord. So there you go. My

22:28

poor grandmother had to suffer the indignity

22:30

of all the neighbours getting their kettles and their cookers

22:33

and she poor creator was still

22:36

using the open fire for cooking

22:38

and for all of that. It

22:39

stayed without electricity for the rest of his life. Until

22:41

the very end when he got a

22:44

single light bulb there wasn't

22:46

a lamp shade on it and when we went down

22:48

for the official turning on of the light

22:50

he already had six

22:51

light scapers attached to it and he

22:53

couldn't see your finger in front of you when we turned on the light. Was

22:56

this your first sort of opening

22:58

event? Exactly. This was the big opening

23:00

event. So hold on when did he die then? Well

23:03

my grandfather died in the 1970s. So

23:05

right to the 70s. Oh yeah

23:07

absolutely yeah. But about two

23:09

years before he died my father had an sister

23:11

on the electric going in and we went down

23:13

to see this great event happening,

23:16

this great concession. I mean George Mitchell

23:18

has nothing on what my

23:20

father tried to persuade my grandfather to get the

23:22

electric. So I toggled between

23:26

the madness of Belfast and

23:28

the awful sectarianism and the

23:30

west of Ireland. And

23:32

in terms of the Republic, the

23:34

community in the Republic,

23:36

you never felt there was a resistance to you because

23:38

of your

23:39

where you came from?

23:40

Oh yes. My grandfather thought my father

23:42

was mad to have married a northern woman even

23:44

though she was a Catholic. I mean she was really a quasi-protestant

23:46

in his eyes because he lived among Protestants.

23:49

On a campaigning, I'm not obviously interested in campaigning.

23:51

When you were campaigning to be president,

23:53

how conscious were people that you were this

23:56

rather exotic creature from the north? Well that

23:58

was part of the attraction that I

23:59

I knew the North, bear in mind this was 1997. And

24:03

George Mitchell was now, you know, had gone very gray

24:07

trying

24:07

to bring the Northern parties to the realization

24:09

that- Do you understand the North helped

24:11

you in the South? It did, and also I had worked as a journalist.

24:14

I had worked as a journalist for the national broadcaster, RTÉ

24:16

in Dublin. I'd also been an academic lawyer. I

24:18

had, you know, I was educated and

24:20

grew up here. I worked here for a short time as a barrister.

24:23

I knew this place intimately, and

24:25

then had come back to live in Northern Ireland

24:27

in 87. My husband had

24:30

trained as a dentist in Dublin, but then had come

24:32

to work along the border in a

24:34

famous place called Cross McGlynn. He

24:37

was a dentist there and in Besprook. And

24:39

I had then come back with our children. We'd

24:42

come back to live and strategically

24:43

placed ourselves beside my mother for babysitting

24:46

purposes in the magnificent village of Rosdrever

24:48

in County Down. So I

24:50

knew that I, you know, I know the North. And

24:53

so far as anybody knows the North, you know,

24:55

we all have our own narratives and our own experiences,

24:58

but I had been a little bit involved in politics

25:00

when I was here before, when I

25:02

was working here, I also was very much involved

25:05

in church life and very

25:07

much involved with

25:08

Father Alec Reed and the Redemptorist Peace

25:10

Ministry, which involved the talks between

25:12

John Hume and Jerry Adams. So,

25:15

and I had already, you know, and also

25:17

even the choice of becoming a lawyer was

25:20

part and parcel of trying to get under the skin of

25:22

this place and to understand what is

25:24

it about the law and structure that

25:26

is holding us back and that which

25:29

have changed could help us to

25:30

move forward. Okay, so wind back

25:33

to the troubles

25:34

and growing up. And there's an experience

25:36

you've talked about before, your dad run

25:39

a pub. Yes. And where-

25:41

On the Falls Road. On the Falls Road. And you

25:43

were confronted very, very directly

25:45

with the consequences of terrorism. Just tell us that.

25:47

Well, we lived in Ardine, but

25:50

we now, we lived in a Protestant part of Ardine.

25:52

We live right beside a loyalist estate

25:55

and there had been a campaign

25:57

of intimidation against Catholics in that area.

25:59

a very significant campaign.

26:02

A lot of people were put out of their houses and then

26:04

the murders, the sectarian murders started

26:07

and then the tit for tat with the

26:09

provisional IRA coming into the frame and

26:12

our house was attacked and

26:15

to well attacked several times actually

26:18

crowds came and broke up paving stones

26:20

and pitched them through our windows. They attempted

26:23

to kill my brother who's profoundly deaf

26:25

and almost succeeded in killing him but thankfully

26:27

not. Then these

26:30

were all loyalist attacks now and these were

26:32

all by neighbours of ours incidentally

26:33

known to us,

26:35

known to us and people

26:39

whom we had been,

26:41

some of them in some cases we had been friendly with,

26:44

some of our, I'm the oldest of nine children so some

26:46

of my brothers and sisters would have been friends

26:48

with some of these

26:49

people, children or brothers or sisters. So

26:52

then when that didn't work and they

26:54

killed our neighbour, murdered our neighbour

26:57

who ran the little sweet shop

26:58

up the road and

27:00

we realised then, I realised then, I

27:03

was 18 then, 19 and I realised

27:05

we're next, they're coming down the road

27:07

for us and anyway

27:09

they did, they came with machine guns and they emptied them through

27:11

our windows but luckily because they were

27:14

Protestants they didn't know we were out at mass and

27:16

my mother had us out at first

27:18

mass, thank you God and so

27:20

yes they didn't kill anybody but they tried. My

27:22

sister Nora's bed was like a colander, I've

27:24

never been able to forget that,

27:25

I still get horrible dreams about seeing

27:28

this mattress with all these mad holes

27:30

in it. Anyway, so

27:32

we survived, thanks be to God but then my

27:35

father had a pub just off the falls

27:37

road, a place called Leeson Street, a very well known pub

27:39

called the Long Bar and

27:43

they put a car bomb outside

27:45

of it and my father

27:48

went out on, because it was called the

27:50

Long Bar because it ran

27:51

across two streets, the car was left

27:53

in the Leeson Street entrance and my

27:55

father got everybody out the other entrance, Cypress

27:57

Street, he

27:58

got them all out but he went back.

27:59

to check and when he went back

28:02

to check he saw a young woman

28:03

run across the road, a young girl,

28:05

Olive McConnell, who

28:08

thought her child was on the street. Because

28:10

the hue and cry had gone up, that

28:13

there was a car bomb, and she ran

28:15

across the street and unfortunately my

28:17

father thought she had tripped and fallen but

28:20

in fact what had happened was the car bomb had exploded.

28:23

My father mercifully was unharmed

28:25

physically but I'm told that it was the

28:27

keys of the car

28:30

had broken her neck. So she looked

28:32

unmarked, you see. My

28:35

father grabbed her

28:37

and then the first person

28:39

on the scene as it turned out was an RTE, the

28:42

national broadcaster and cameraman, a

28:44

great old friend of mine as it turned out later. He

28:47

was first on the scene and he realised

28:49

that my father did not know she was dead.

28:52

My

28:54

father was a very gregarious man,

28:56

great storyteller, full of fun

28:59

but that was the day his life changed really. When

29:01

he came home he was, we now

29:04

know that

29:05

he was suffering from a catatonic depression which he

29:07

suffered from for the next few years. He didn't speak for a

29:09

couple of years, he was unable to talk. Funnily

29:12

enough, I came home from university

29:14

one day and my mother said, my father

29:17

just sat all the time listening to a transistor

29:19

radio and there was no

29:21

words out of him at all. It

29:23

must have been very hard on my mother raising nine children,

29:26

no money coming in. Your dad had not

29:28

had depression before that? Never. My

29:31

father depressed, he mad. Never, never ever ever. Did

29:33

he struggle with depression for the rest of his life? Oh absolutely,

29:35

utterly, utterly.

29:36

There was no name for it

29:38

then, we didn't know about trauma or post-traumatic

29:41

anything but as well as that we didn't

29:43

have a home of our own then you see. We'd lost our

29:45

home and we were living in a house that had

29:47

been condemned, it was owned by

29:50

nuns who lent it to us and

29:52

we were now over in West Belfast in Andersonstown

29:55

and the house was a bit of a disaster to put it

29:57

mildly. The

29:59

day we walked in

29:59

to it. There were 19

30:00

of the windows and it had been broken

30:03

and somebody had tried to set fire to it.

30:06

There were reasons for that as we discovered subsequently

30:08

the IRA had been using it as a place to hide

30:10

weapons. We didn't know that then obviously but

30:13

they didn't want us there either, thank you very much.

30:15

So the loyalists didn't want us,

30:17

the IRA crowd didn't want us and we

30:20

were in the middle of this and my mother is now coping with nine

30:22

children and

30:24

this man who went out that morning, you know, reasonably

30:27

happy-go-lucky, comes back not speaking. Anyway,

30:29

fast forward to...

30:30

You're literally not speaking. Oh, literally not speaking,

30:33

not talking. No, not saying nothing,

30:35

just sighing into the fire, going

30:37

to bed, getting up in the morning, sighing, like a whole day

30:39

of sighing and just awful.

30:42

Anyway, I came home from university one day,

30:44

came in through the back door and my mother said to me, I'm not going to

30:46

believe this, she said, your daddy,

30:48

your daddy started to talk today. I said, what

30:50

did he say? What did he say? And

30:53

he said, shut up to hell, you little bitch. I said, what?

30:55

He said that to you? He said

30:58

that to you? He said, no, she didn't say

31:00

it to me. He said it to some woman on the radio

31:02

called Margaret Thatcher.

31:06

So we call it the miracle

31:08

of Maggie Thatcher. So Maggie brought him

31:10

back to life. Well, we don't even know what she said because

31:12

she wasn't prime minister, Alastair, at the time.

31:14

She was minister for education, I think. And was it when she was

31:16

snatching the milk? It must have been

31:19

that. Could it have been that? It could have been that.

31:21

Why would the Irish media be covering...

31:24

My father would

31:26

be on BBC, you know, just to get, you know,

31:28

because he was like a lot of people in Northern Ireland, you know,

31:30

he maximized the number of hours in the day when he could

31:32

be insulted. And so,

31:36

you know, he'd be listening to radio four

31:38

or, you know, BBC Radio One radio all started

31:40

and he'd know that existed then. So we

31:42

never were able to find out what the broadcast

31:45

was about. And after that, for the rest of his

31:47

life, how chronic was the

31:49

depression? He came back to himself and

31:52

he tried his best. He did. Did

31:55

he ever get treatment? Not at all. Not

31:57

at all. You didn't do that then. Because, no, you're worth... No,

31:59

he did.

31:59

What would you say to your friends and

32:02

people who came around and saw your

32:04

dad like that? What would you say was going on?

32:07

You know, I don't we didn't even talk about

32:09

it. Here's the thing. We didn't talk about it. Honestly,

32:11

Alistair's disgraceful.

32:13

We didn't talk about it. We hadn't the language. I

32:15

was coming home one day from work here in

32:17

Queens. And I lived in Ristrever and

32:20

I love to turn the car at the seafront

32:23

and Warren point and just say to the sea,

32:25

take it all. I'll catch up with all my

32:28

problems in the morning and the way back. But to the sea

32:30

and the waves, take it now. Going

32:32

home to face whatever we were facing. But

32:34

as it happened that week, I got a I was ill

32:37

and I was in bed and my dad came around as

32:39

he did every day and he sat at the edge of the bed out of the blue. I said

32:41

to him, dad, could I take you back

32:43

to that day of the explosion

32:46

and the day

32:48

when our lives just seem to change so catastrophically?

32:52

Could you tell me what went on in your head? And you

32:54

know what he said to me? You're the first person ever

32:56

asked me that. This was donkey shears

32:58

later. I mean donkey shears later.

33:02

And so he did. He talked about it. And

33:05

I said, did you ever think of yourself as a person who

33:07

suffered from an

33:09

illness

33:11

that needed help? You know, maybe from a psychiatrist or

33:13

psychologist? No. He said I didn't. He said

33:15

there were too many other people around me who had suffered death

33:17

and destruction and people had suffered physical injury.

33:20

So who was I to say there's anything wrong with me? And

33:23

I've often said Northern Ireland is a place of

33:26

swathers of people like my father

33:29

who are suffering from real,

33:32

real depression. But don't

33:34

say it because they believe that there

33:36

is a hierarchy of victims. There's a hierarchy

33:39

of illnesses. And we have a culture

33:41

of stoicism that doesn't

33:43

allow them to break through and say, oh,

33:45

even today. Worse would you say than the

33:47

rest of Ireland or the rest of the UK?

33:51

rates

34:00

here. I don't know if you've seen the stats, but the suicide

34:02

rate here is through the roof. What

34:04

does that tell us? Because the red line

34:06

that shows you the graph of actual

34:08

suicides, underneath that there's

34:10

another graph of attempted suicides,

34:13

of mental ill health, of untreated mental

34:15

health problems. There's a whole swathe

34:18

of that going on here. I know it. The people who

34:20

take refuge in what we call cans,

34:22

the can culture, drink it away or

34:25

drug it away, or just be

34:27

lonely in it.

34:29

I

34:29

think that's one of the great tragedies of Northern Ireland

34:32

that really has not been properly dealt with. There are

34:34

wonderful organisations, greater organisations

34:36

for example, like Wave Trauma, that

34:38

has tried to address that. But

34:42

you know, they're pushing them. They're pushing them mountain.

34:44

They're just pushing a mountain in

34:45

front of them. And of course it's a lot harder if you don't have a functioning

34:48

government. It's impossible if you haven't

34:50

got a functioning government because again, like

34:52

so... And this is the kind of stuff that doesn't even get talked about

34:54

in the political context. And I think my father's

34:56

a classic example of some

34:59

kind of pride would let

35:01

him talk about it.

35:02

Not because he thought he'd be letting himself down or

35:04

weakening himself, but rather that he

35:06

thought that people might think that he was looking for sympathy.

35:08

And there were so many other people deserving

35:11

of sympathy. And we'd lost so many

35:13

friends. I mean, the day I was married, two of our best friends

35:15

were murdered the morning of my wedding, which kind

35:17

of ruined the wedding to put it mildly, you

35:20

know, awful. And here they are.

35:22

And their family had terrible

35:24

problems. Subsequently, those two men, one of them

35:26

had, you know, he had seven children, seven

35:29

small children when he died for nothing except

35:31

that he was, you know, a Catholic

35:32

bar owner. And then in retaliation

35:35

for them, the IRA, the loyalist murdered them.

35:37

And the next day, the IRA

35:39

go into a pub and kill a perfectly innocent

35:41

Protestant man. And his daughter

35:44

becomes a great friend of mine later, where

35:46

we both find ourselves in Florida, in

35:49

Miami.

35:50

And by we got talking politics

35:52

because it was 12th of July, and everybody

35:55

was acting the idiot, you know, and, you know, banging

35:57

drums and singing, singing the songs that are

35:59

associated with the

35:59

12th in good, great, good humor and

36:02

together. And then I discovered

36:05

that her daddy had been killed in retaliation

36:07

for the two O'Reilly brothers who

36:10

were murdered on the morning of my wedding. So, you

36:13

know, that brings you back to our house with a bump, because that's the world

36:15

we lived in tit for tat, tit for tat. And

36:18

nobody able to break out of the

36:21

sectarian bunker. The only,

36:23

the only wounds that we felt

36:26

were our wounds. We didn't feel their wounds.

36:28

And, and I think my father probably

36:31

felt too, um,

36:33

that like so many people here, there

36:35

are much, people are much worse

36:37

off than me. No, the thing you say about the hierarchy

36:39

of pain and that, that's a very, very powerful point.

36:42

Now, I love the fact, Mary, that we've done almost

36:44

an hour and we haven't talked

36:47

once about your time as president. Really. We

36:49

haven't talked about so much in

36:51

your life that you've done, but I want

36:54

to close with it, with it, with a

36:56

couple of questions. One that does relate to your time as

36:58

president and one that relates to the here

37:01

and now, and you mentioned

37:03

when you were growing up in the house's

37:05

opposite, you'd have a picture of the queen

37:07

and yours, you'd have a picture of JFK. And

37:10

you did become the president who

37:12

welcomed the queen to the Republic,

37:14

which was a pretty amazing moment. Um,

37:16

and the, the, the issue that

37:19

I want to get you, and I really want you

37:21

to get you going on this about the here

37:23

and now is your views

37:26

on Brexit, which I have heard and

37:29

which I love for our listeners to hear as well.

37:31

So you can take those two questions or whichever, or

37:33

do you wish? Well,

37:35

my presidency was about building bridges.

37:37

I'd come from the North.

37:39

We were in the throes of getting the Good Friday agreement

37:42

sorted and getting a new

37:44

dispensation for the North. I felt my job

37:46

now here is to take the spirit

37:49

of the Good Friday agreement and indeed

37:51

the strand three part

37:54

of the Good Friday agreement between

37:56

the Irish and the British. And,

37:59

and also. the cross border. Because

38:02

the agreement was about people inside Northern

38:04

Ireland, the cross border and then East-West relationship.

38:07

And across those three strands, I

38:09

wanted to do what I could to drive forward

38:11

the spirit. So building bridges was my theme

38:14

and we worked very hard, very assiduously at that.

38:17

And long before I became president, I had met Her

38:19

Majesty the Queen and had learnt

38:21

from her that when I was actually

38:24

a provise chancellor here, I met her in the context

38:26

of our big anniversary of our university.

38:29

And I had

38:29

discussed with her that her great ambition

38:32

to come to the Republic

38:33

of Ireland and I'd said to her, not quite

38:35

a throwaway line, I mean, I meant it that if it's anything ever

38:38

we could do to make that happen, I'd make

38:40

sure I work assiduously to make it happen.

38:42

So when I went into office, I did, along

38:45

with a lot of other people besides. So bringing

38:47

her to the Republic for

38:50

those four days, bearing in mind that you know that

38:52

some people were so security worried that

38:54

they just wanted her to come in for half a day, get a cup of tea and

38:56

get her gone. And you know, and I said,

38:59

actually, you can't call that a state visit. That's a flying

39:01

visit. It's not the same thing. And if we do that, we

39:03

still have to have a state visit. No, we're going

39:05

to do this right, because I think

39:07

she's going to come as a pilgrim. She's not going to come

39:09

as a tourist. She's going to come as a pilgrim.

39:12

And I knew that I talked to talk to her so many times

39:14

about it. And she and I had pretty much the

39:16

same, the same kind of religious sensibilities.

39:19

And we both believe very firmly in

39:21

the power

39:22

of life. You're not telling me the Queen was a Catholic? No,

39:24

not at all. But she was a very good Christian

39:26

woman. She was a woman of deep Christian sensibilities.

39:30

So she and I shared those. And so

39:32

I knew that I knew for her that

39:34

this was a pilgrimage. And I

39:36

trusted her implicitly. And thankfully, she trusted

39:38

me. So we've kind of set up a back channel

39:40

for the things that went into that visit that

39:43

we were told could never go into it like her speaking

39:45

Irish or going to

39:46

Croke Park or going to the Garden of Remembrance.

39:48

She did them all with a heart and a half. She was wonderful, superb.

39:52

Was that a high point of your presidency?

39:53

Funnily enough, it was a great memory. Absolutely

39:56

a high point. It was a high point in terms of the building

39:58

bridges, undoubtedly.

39:59

If you're asking me for the best day of my

40:02

life as president, it probably wasn't

40:04

that. It was back in 2003 when

40:07

we hosted the World Special

40:09

Games Olympics. And in

40:11

Croke Park, we had the opening of the games

40:13

and we had young people with intellectual disabilities

40:16

from all over the world. And

40:18

honestly, I was up at that stage. And for one

40:20

moment, I felt that I'd been beamed onto

40:22

another planet because the mood

40:25

was, it was sort of exuberance

40:27

multiplied by a million. It was so beautiful

40:30

and wonderful and that was special. But

40:32

actually there was something of that too in the Queen's

40:34

visit. It released a graciousness, a

40:36

goodness, a happiness. And at the end

40:39

of her visit, when she left, bearing

40:41

in mind, she got more letters about that visit than

40:43

she got about any state visit. So did I. I

40:46

got loads of them. But one of them came from this 90-year-old woman

40:48

who started off saying that she was a Republican and

40:50

she didn't like monarchs and she didn't like the monarch

40:52

next door. And she didn't think

40:53

I should have asked her, oh God, I read the letter. And I

40:56

thought, here we go. But then she said,

40:58

I decided to watch it on television and

41:00

I watched it for four days. She

41:03

said she wept for four days. She

41:05

felt this history drain out

41:08

of her

41:08

to be replaced by something really

41:11

healthy and good. And she said

41:13

when the Queen's flight took off from Cork

41:15

Airport, she looked back

41:17

on those four days and she said this

41:20

was choreographed by the angels. And

41:23

I thought you should have seen the people who choreographed

41:25

this, dear. They weren't angels. But

41:27

you know, God works in mysterious ways.

41:30

But but wasn't that wonderful. And

41:32

I would settle for that. So that

41:34

was a wonderful relationship. It was a great high point

41:37

because, you know, during Maggie Thatcher's time, we hadn't

41:39

had a great relationship. But over the years, the relationship

41:41

been up and down. John Major, bless him,

41:43

and Albert Reynolds had recalibrated

41:45

the relationship brilliantly. Tony

41:48

Blair and Bertie Hern had worked on

41:50

that assiduously. And now we

41:52

were we were actually in a golden moment, really,

41:54

where we really felt that history was

41:57

moving us in a direction where we were

41:59

partners and friends. friends, different

42:01

but friends, and then came

42:03

Brexit. And I

42:06

could not believe Brexit. There hadn't

42:08

been a hint that the

42:10

United Kingdom would even be remotely considering

42:13

leaving the European Union, which for me

42:15

is the greatest adventure and the

42:17

greatest, the most noble adventure ever undertaken

42:20

by humankind in the history

42:22

of humankind. You know, that

42:24

extraordinary phenomenon. France

42:26

and Germany, the Allies

42:28

and the Axis forces coming together

42:31

after the great bloodfest

42:34

that was the Second World War into this

42:36

remarkable partnership

42:37

for prosperity through

42:40

collaboration, through cooperation,

42:42

through collegiality. Remarkable, phenomenal.

42:45

I really bought into that. I loved all that. And then suddenly

42:48

we've Brexit. No green paper, no

42:50

white paper, no preparation, just a

42:52

bunch of shibboleths and suddenly,

42:55

you know, and these ridiculous mad promises.

42:57

And nobody mentions Northern Ireland and nobody mentions

43:00

the Good Friday Agreement with the noble

43:02

exception, of course, of, you know, of Jonny Blair and

43:04

John Major and and Bertie Ahern, but

43:06

also, of course, Theresa May, to whom I give huge

43:08

credit. And the fact that she came here during

43:10

the campaign, she

43:11

came here during the campaign, she saw

43:13

the dangers. And then when she was

43:15

prime minister, in order to avert

43:18

those dangers, that deal that

43:20

she came up with had a bust

43:22

not been run over it by the DUP, among others,

43:25

that would have absolved us from these blessed

43:27

years of arguing over a protocol. And

43:29

what is more, we would have reverted

43:31

to a situation that was so good here on the island

43:33

of Ireland after we got

43:35

the single European market

43:38

in 1993 and the customs union. There was no

43:40

need for

43:43

a border. Then the only border

43:45

we had was a militarized border. Then

43:48

the Good Friday Agreement and it gave

43:50

us demilitarization. So we had this

43:52

huge normalization on

43:54

the island of Ireland, which was so healthy,

43:56

built up good neighbourliness. We had the

43:59

cross border border.

43:59

bodies under the Good Friday Agreement. We

44:02

had the spirit of the agreement and there was

44:04

a wonderful, just a wonderful

44:06

sense that we were now going to grow organically

44:09

as people. So

44:09

how did we go from that? Can we visit? To

44:11

Brexit. Where we are. How did that happen

44:14

in your view? Careless politics.

44:15

The politics of populism and

44:19

bad, really bad politics from

44:21

people. I mean, I have no, I'll say this

44:23

publicly. I've said it before anyway.

44:25

I have no

44:27

respect for politicians who are populist

44:29

and unprincipled and who are, you know,

44:31

greasy pole climbers. In the same way that I have no time for

44:34

clerics who are greasy pole climbers. So

44:36

you've absolved Theresa May of that? That

44:38

woman I admire. You've absolved David Cameron?

44:40

I like David Cameron, don't get me wrong. I do

44:43

like him very much, but I think the calling of

44:45

that referendum was just a big mistake. And

44:47

Johnson? If he was going to

44:49

call it, have a two year, three

44:51

year period of green papers, white papers,

44:54

discussions, I described it as like pulling a tooth with 10,000

44:56

roots. I also describe that

44:59

as a form of political necrotizing

45:01

fasciitis- Which is what? Well,

45:03

necrotizing fasciitis is a flesh eating disease. And

45:06

if you remember the amount of political time

45:08

in Europe, in England, in Ireland that was eaten

45:10

up by

45:10

the Brexit, the most referendum

45:13

discussions, you couldn't discuss anything else.

45:16

And so for me, that's where it

45:18

was, it was like amegad101 anxiety.

45:20

So how did you feel? And Boris,

45:22

you asked me about- Don't call I Jan morality, we don't

45:24

call him Boris on this podcast, we call him Johnson.

45:27

Mr. Johnson, I despaired.

45:30

I despaired. I just despaired

45:32

of him. And I

45:34

despaired of Liz Truss, their language

45:37

of- I heard in

45:39

their language, the old language of disrespect

45:42

for all things Irish, that kind of elitist,

45:46

upper class, nastiness.

45:49

We had lost all that. It was gone.

45:51

It had evaporated. We weren't

45:53

decolonized any longer.

45:55

We were the next door neighbours, free and independent.

45:58

But what we heard in- and what you heard in Liz

46:01

is, oh my God, it's back to the empire,

46:03

it's back to the colonies. They're treating us like

46:06

we're the servants around here.

46:08

It's appalling, it was just the worst

46:10

period. But anyway, thankfully, I have

46:13

to say, in fairness to Rishi Sunak, the

46:15

effort that he has put in since becoming Prime

46:17

Minister to redressing that and

46:19

indeed dealing with the protocol and coming

46:21

up through with the help of the European Union, who've

46:24

given acres of space to this, I mean, it

46:26

really didn't, I wonder,

46:28

he didn't merit all of this space quite frankly,

46:31

but it was given willingly in

46:33

order to help Northern Ireland blossom

46:36

and the Good Friday Agreement come again into

46:38

its own, because that's what the people want. I

46:40

mean, you look at the, I look at the referendum still.

46:43

For me, funnily enough, it isn't the Good Friday

46:45

day, which was a great day, but the best day,

46:47

it was the 22nd of June, when the twin referenda

46:50

were held North and South and we knew

46:52

with absolute moral certainty

46:55

that almost everybody you met

46:57

on the street thought the same thing about

46:59

the peace and was

47:00

prepared to compromise. They might have a different

47:02

political ambition, but they didn't want anybody dying

47:05

over it and they were not gonna kill people over

47:07

it and they wanted to embrace each other

47:09

in a compromise. That was the best

47:12

ever.

47:12

Mary, I could talk to you

47:14

all day. You could definitely talk all

47:17

day, guys, that is for sure. As my mother says.

47:19

But honestly, it was absolute joy

47:21

to talk to you. I've enjoyed talking to you, it's been

47:24

great. I

47:24

thank you for what you do for mental health also,

47:26

because it's the hidden

47:29

one, isn't it? Yeah, Mary,

47:31

thanks a lot and we'll see you soon. Thank you so much,

47:34

really enjoyed it, thank you.