Mary Robinson's Memoir: "Everybody Matters"

[PaddyJoe]

I hadn't even realised that Mary was at the memoir stage until she popped up on Tubridy tonight.

MARY Bourke wanted to be a nun. As the former President of Ireland reveals in her new memoir Everybody Matters, she made her decision at the age of 17, but was told by the Reverend Mother Provincial at Mount Anville to go away and think about it for a year.

I think there was a piece in the Sunday Times last week about her difficult relationships with colleagues in the UN but I didn't read it.
Tubridy so far isn't asking any difficult questions.

[PaddyJoe]

"New clothes, new look, new interest in family..none of us who knew her noticed her interest in family"
The Flynnstone moment...

[Spectabilis]

I ...





....Mary Robinson

[Mick Tully]

If she is looking for another state job, they should have serious look at her references, after the last Irish position she held in Ireland. Failing to complete the term in office, that the Irish people voted her into should be considered.

[jmcc]

Labour will probably create some quango just for her. The Irish Presidency is not a step on a career ladder and that's how she treated it.

Regards...jmcc

[Shaadi]

Her election to the Presidency was a huge breakthrough for Liberal Ireland. She can be hard to stomach at times but on balance she's a good enough egg to merit respect. As for leaving the Presidency, there's nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, she had done her job in modernising the post and was still a relatively young woman.

[Count Bobulescu]

Her election to the Presidency was a huge breakthrough for Liberal Ireland. She can be hard to stomach at times but on balance she's a good enough egg to merit respect. As for leaving the Presidency, there's nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, she had done her job in modernising the post and was still a relatively young woman.

Agreed.

[fluffybiscuits]

Her election to the Presidency was a huge breakthrough for Liberal Ireland. She can be hard to stomach at times but on balance she's a good enough egg to merit respect. As for leaving the Presidency, there's nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, she had done her job in modernising the post and was still a relatively young woman.

Just wondering how she can be a bit hard to stomach at times? The woman was a hero and still is for her work. She helped Norris, worked tirelessley as a politician and her work as UN HRC is unequalled. If anything she embodies what a politician should be does she not?

[Spectabilis]

Her Foundation is located in Trinity College and funded by philanthropic organisations. Primary focus is on the poor who are impacted by climate change .

http://www.mrfcj.org/about/our_work/overview.html

[Shaadi]

Just wondering how she can be a bit hard to stomach at times? The woman was a hero and still is for her work. She helped Norris, worked tirelessley as a politician and her work as UN HRC is unequalled. If anything she embodies what a politician should be does she not?

She does, but the whole over-sincere Noddy/Bonoesque, Mother Theresa, candle in the Aras routine is not to my taste.

She'd also be a fan of the Pavee Point separation of Travellers as an ethnicity approach, which I'd see as counter to the ideals of treating all citizens as equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. I went to school with Travellers when they were treated like crap, they weren't a separate ethnicity, they were just a very disadvantaged group that needed to be treated properly and helped to reach a point where they were no longer disadvantaged.

[d.vader]

Reminded me of the P Flynn interview on the Late Late Show ... Same arrogance and both from Mayo (or some such godforsaken part of the country)

[fluffybiscuits]

She does, but the whole over-sincere Noddy/Bonoesque, Mother Theresa, candle in the Aras routine is not to my taste.

She'd also be a fan of the Pavee Point separation of Travellers as an ethnicity approach, which I'd see as counter to the ideals of treating all citizens as equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. I went to school with Travellers when they were treated like crap, they weren't a separate ethnicity, they were just a very disadvantaged group that needed to be treated properly and helped to reach a point where they were no longer disadvantaged.

Lot of food for thought there...

[Baron von Biffo]

I hope for their sake the publishers stipulated that Robbo wouldn't be paid unless she finished it.

[Andrew49]

She does, but the whole over-sincere Noddy/Bonoesque, Mother Theresa, candle in the Aras routine is not to my taste.

She'd also be a fan of the Pavee Point separation of Travellers as an ethnicity approach, which I'd see as counter to the ideals of treating all citizens as equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. I went to school with Travellers when they were treated like crap, they weren't a separate ethnicity, they were just a very disadvantaged group that needed to be treated properly and helped to reach a point where they were no longer disadvantaged.

I spent only a little time with a Traveller family as a child. That family taught me lessons in family values which have stayed with me to this day. LINK

Imagine a situation where a Government report is published into State child care outlining "Dickensian and deplorable conditions, malnourishment of children and gross neglect of children" and the Government completely ignores it - even though several Ministers know that the report also covers up and whitewashes the physical & sexual torture of children by clergy? This report was 'published' in 1970 and it took until 1973 for this report to be 'debated' in the Oireachtas ... actual it was only debated in the Seanad and it was the young Mary Robinson who made sure the report was put on the record of the Oireachtas. She has my undying gratitude for that.

[Shaadi]

I spent only a little time with a Traveller family as a child. That family taught me lessons in family values which have stayed with me to this day. LINK

Imagine a situation where a Government report is published into State child care outlining "Dickensian and deplorable conditions, malnourishment of children and gross neglect of children" and the Government completely ignores it - even though several Ministers know that the report also covers up and whitewashes the physical & sexual torture of children by clergy? This report was 'published' in 1970 and it took until 1973 for this report to be 'debated' in the Oireachtas ... actual it was only debated in the Seanad and it was the young Mary Robinson who made sure the report was put on the record of the Oireachtas. She has my undying gratitude for that.

Point taken Andrew, it took courage and decency to stick your head above the parapet in those days, something that 99% of people in political and Administrative circles lacked.

On the Travellers, there's simply no comparison between where Travellers are now and where the majority of them were in the 70s. As a kid in the 70s, I was disgusted at the attitude of teachers towards them. They were literally treated like dirt and battered in school, many of the Traveller kids I went to school with were very damaged by the educational system. That was at a time when many of them literally lived on the side of the road, while they also had their own official shanty town where they had tigeens (small houses). It was like an Indian reservation where they were just dumped, excluded from society and ignored by society apart from the charities and health services.

Back then many of those Travellers that settled in council housing made a good integration into settled society. There came a generation after the initial settled Travellers where many of them seemed to have a dysfunctional family life. Some Travellers that I went to school with ended up with a troubled life, that I'm convinced stems from their brutal mistreatment in the educational system and their exclusion from settled society.

My point being that those who were integrated properly in the early stages had healthy lives. Those that were treated absymally have in many cases gone on to multi-generational levels of dysfunctional families. The initial cause being the mistreatment, exclusion and separation of them from society. No society should be happy to see that separatism continue, the same goes for the multi-generational problem housing estates. We should plough money into advancing the educational standards and employment opportunities of people from didadvantaged backgrounds.

Sulky racing and bareknuckle boxing weren't part of the Traveller culture of the Kids I went to school with, they didn't even have clean clothes and smelled of smoke. A world away from what passes for modern Traveller culture.