Katherine Zappone is both insider and outsider.
The former minister for children and youth affairs has just published an unusual political memoir. Yes, there are landmark moments tracked and key highlights of a ministerial career selected, and expanded upon.
Yes, there are insights into the dispositions of some other politicians, and into negotiations and bargaining.
But it’s also a book about a relationship that defined her life, with her late wife, Ann Louise Gilligan, who died in June 2017, after declining health with brain haemorrhages and fading eyesight.
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“It was very hard to write. It’s hard for me to read it,” says Zappone. “I didn’t really realise, I think, how crazy you can become with grief. When I say crazy, I mean you’re just put off your usual path, and you make decisions that you might not usually do ... And living with the devastation, but trying to do it in a way that you’re trying to come out the other side. It doesn’t just take the time, you have to be intentional about it.
“But I think for me, one of the ways I was able to do that ultimately is that I felt that she ... ” Her composure cracks, sitting in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel, with her voice straining and eyes tearing up. “You know, even though she was gone, that she became part of me here,” she puts her hand to her chest, “in a way that I hadn’t felt before, because I could see myself saying things that she would say. Or even my mannerisms sometimes – I had adopted some of her habits.”
What Zappone learned from the loss of her spouse is that “it’s possible to move through it. It’s possible to find new life, new hope, obviously for me a new relationship, a new partnership. And then to bring the perspective and the awareness and the knowledge of death to what you do from then on. Because most of us probably don’t live every day thinking we’re going to die ... But if we were to live with that awareness more, then that would change how we are with each other, and how we’d be in the world.”
Zappone met her new partner, Jennifer, for the first time in March 2021 at a David Hockney exhibition in New York. Jennifer is a South African who was living in the US, and a Buddhist with a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford working in strategic communications, and Zappone writes of their relationship developing that year as a time when “moments of joy began to fill my body again”.
And then there’s how Zappone’s time in electoral politics ended, losing her Dáil seat in 2020, but also the maelstrom that unfolded in 2021 around her appointment as a UN special envoy.
In September 2019, Zappone was already working with others on Ireland’s ultimately successful campaign to secure a UN Security Council seat. The general election happened in February 2020, the pandemic hit, and her work in government ended in July.
She left Ireland for the US, volunteering on the Biden-Harris campaign. Zappone writes that towards the end of February 2021, then minister for foreign affairs Simon Coveney rang her. “He had been thinking about the priorities for Ireland’s two years on the Security Council and wondered if I had any ongoing interest in LGBTQ+ diversity and equality issues in the international arena. I said, ‘Of course!’ He indicated that there might be a role I could play, for Ireland, on these topics.”
Early in March, Coveney rang her again, she writes. “I understood that he was offering me an opportunity to represent Ireland again. The details needed to be hammered out, and he would leave that to his officials.” An announcement was planned for June, which didn’t happen.
Leo Varadkar, in his own recently published memoir, says Zappone “had approached me, Simon Coveney and Paschal Donohoe about a role”. He writes that he liked the idea but left it to Coveney to work it out, adding that he had thought she would be an LGBTQI+ envoy but what emerged was a proposal that she become a “UN Special Envoy on Freedom of Opinion and Expression”.
Zappone had planned a trip to the UK and Dublin, part of which would be a gathering for family, friends and colleagues since lockdown in 2020 had denied such goodbyes. She contacted the Merrion Hotel, which planned the details of the gathering with the obvious caveat that it would be adhering to government restrictions. The hotel outlined the protocols: the reception was to be outside, guests were to be seated at tables to avoid mingling, masks were recommended.
The night before the gathering, Zappone writes that Coveney phoned her again to say he would be bringing her appointment before Cabinet the following week. By the time that meeting was held, Zappone and her partner were back in New York. “By the Wednesday, subsequent to a leak from Cabinet about the appointment, my whole world began to change. I was accused of lobbying the minister, and Simon Coveney was criticised for a lack of transparency and appropriate procedures in the appointment process.”
In early August a story broke alleging her reception in the Merrion Hotel had not followed Covid restrictions. Zappone writes that she was “shocked” by this, saying all government-communicated restrictions were strictly followed. She cites a misalignment between the then government regulations in public-health measures and Fáilte Ireland’s guidelines. The attorney general subsequently advised government that social events of up to 200 people were legally allowed.
[ Coveney apologised for not following procedure in Zappone appointment – TaoiseachOpens in new window ]
Incidentally, in his book, Varadkar writes that he considered resigning when news emerged he had attended the gathering, and he even sat down to write a statement but was dissuaded by comments from Micheál Martin and others.
Zappone issued a statement saying she would not be accepting the envoy role. She says that she could not recognise herself in media commentary: “A picture was painted of me as elitist, corrupt and dishonourable.”
The controversy around her appointment had started when it emerged Coveney – who said Zappone didn’t lobby him – had brought the plan to cabinet without informing taoiseach Micheál Martin in advance.
Was she protecting Coveney? She raises her voice, emphatic: “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No. He accepted it, that he was at fault.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to [speak out], but I made a discernment from that distance and from listening to many colleagues and friends that if I were to say anything and offer that really strong view, you know how your profession [media] would have responded to that. They would have tried to tear that apart. Some of the politicians, they would also tear that apart. So I don’t know if it would’ve ended it. My judgment was it would not have ended it.”
Even now, I ask myself: where’s the most power? Is it inside or is it outside?
— Katherine Zappone
She argues the accusations or characterisations of cronyism are “wrong”, and that Coveney – except around how he informed cabinet – was, as a minister, engaging in a process of identifying expertise for a role.
Has she spoken to him about it? “I have.” Recently? “It was probably about six weeks ago, a couple of months ago, subsequent to coming home. And it was a very honest, straightforward, heartfelt conversation on both of our parts. And he apologised to me.” And did she accept the apology? “Yes.” She was hurt, angry and damaged but ultimately made a decision to move past it, “I’m not claiming it doesn’t flare up at times. But it’s time to lay down my anger. All right. And that is a process.”
She was nominated as a Senator in 2011 by then taoiseach Enda Kenny, and elected an Independent TD in February 2016, entering Cabinet later that year with Fine Gael and other Independents.
Memoir writing is a reflective activity. “Even now, I ask myself: where’s the most power? Is it inside or is it outside?” she says. Where does she land? “I remember having a certain amount of power inside that I didn’t have outside, but at the same time – and I think at least because of the way I was positioned as an Independent – I didn’t feel it was a tonne of power. I didn’t get everything.”
Ultimately the call she made to go into government was rooted in a desire to get things done. “Maybe for me it was because I was later on in my career, where I just felt, oh my God, I didn’t want to spent the next four or five years, I suppose, protesting. I wanted to see if it was possible to move things forward by making those decisions on the basis of a vision and getting agreement with your colleagues. Which is what I sometimes managed to do. Not always.”
Love in a Time of Politics by Katherine Zappone is published by Hachette
