ANALYSIS:Mary McAleese kept an unrelenting focus over her 14 years in the Áras on bringing the Queen to Ireland, despite some misgivings from Bertie Ahern, and her visit was the high point of the Ardoyne-born President's terms in office, writes DEAGLÁN de BRÉADÚN, Political Correspondent
IT WAS one of those unforgettable TV moments. When the Queen of England unexpectedly opened her speech at Dublin Castle last May with a “cúpla focal” in the sweet and kingly tongue of the Gael, the President of Ireland, almost overcome with emotion, mouthed the word “Wow!”. Not once, but three times.
It was a clear sign that the visit by the British head of state was succeeding beyond the wildest dreams of her Irish counterpart. This was the high point of the McAleese presidency and was regarded by the monarch, by all accounts, as one of the most important events in her reign as well.
Given the friendly nature of British-Irish relations these days, Queen Elizabeth II was virtually certain to come to this State at some point, but without the efforts of Mary McAleese it would still be at the planning stage.
Insiders recall how the President was ahead of everyone else at government and Civil Service level in believing the visit could and should take place. “Most people were funking it,” recalls a senior political source.
The President meets the taoiseach of the day about every six weeks at Áras an Uachtaráin, and she made sure it was on the agenda every time she met Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny.
Her focus was unrelenting, despite the misgivings of Ahern, who had no objection in principle but was concerned that a dissident republican “spectacular” could fatally damage, not just the visit, but also the delicate balance in the peace process itself.
Cowen was more relaxed about it and, in the event, it was he who announced the visit after a meeting in London with British prime minister David Cameron.
However, it was McAleese who was pushing for it all the time. The woman from a nationalist background in the Ardoyne district of Belfast had developed a very warm rapport with the Queen.
Sources say the friendship really took root on Armistice Day, November 11th, 1998, when the President, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth and Belgium’s King Albert II, opened the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines in Belgium, in memory of the tens of thousands from both main traditions who perished in the first World War.
In a culture where everyone has to be labelled, our outgoing President defies easy categorisation. An unapologetic Irish nationalist, she nevertheless carved out a niche in the UK establishment as a director of Channel 4 Television and Northern Ireland Electricity and as head of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.
Likewise, her arrival in the Áras was seen by some commentators as the end of liberalism in Ireland, given the new head of State’s conservative record on divorce, contraception and abortion. But she supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality and caused a major shake-up in the Catholic Church when she took Communion at a Church of Ireland service in Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral.
There are few politicians anywhere who could spend 14 years in office and end up more popular than when they started. The difference between McAleese and the others is that she is richly endowed with emotional intelligence.
That was seen in her remarks, without notes or preparation, on RTÉ at the time of the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
She caught the public mood as, speaking in emotional tones, she said: “It’s a crime against the very foundations of all our humanity and our hearts . . . our response to that is and has to be to stand shoulder to shoulder with our American brothers and sisters.”
Another prime example, in the same context, came six months later at a function in the ballroom of New York’s Plaza Hotel, which was crowded with grieving relatives and friends of firefighters and police officers of Irish origin who had perished in the inferno at the World Trade Center.
An eyewitness to the occasion, organised by Irish America magazine, recalls the hurt and the anguish that hung like a dark mist over the crowd. McAleese rose to the occasion, reducing even seasoned fire officers and members of “New York’s finest” to tears with her words of comfort and her contention that their Irish forebears “would be proud of a modern generation who have known the easy times and comfort of prosperity but who, when tested, chose the hardest road of all”.
Spontaneity has its pitfalls and a little self-editing would have helped when she compared the attitude of Northern Ireland unionists to their nationalist neighbours with that of the Nazis towards the Jews, but for the most part she struck the proper chord with those she encountered.
Whereas her predecessor, Mary Robinson, courageously used the presidency as a cutting edge to advance particular causes, such as the peace process, the rights of the gay community and better Anglo-Irish relations, she was generally held in more respect than affection.
McAleese scored about equal on both counts.
Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, as unlucky in the office as McAleese was fortunate, said that, under the Constitution, the president could not have policies but “a president can have a theme”.
The motif of McAleese’s term in office was, of course, “bridge-building”, by which she meant, not structures of steel and concrete, but reconciliation between the divided communities in the North, between North and South, and between Ireland and Britain.
Growing up during the Troubles, she had her fair share of pain and suffering as she watched relatives and friends fall victim to sectarian strife.
Perhaps it was these experiences that helped her understand the pain the unionist population was also going through and motivated her to invite thousands from that community to visit the Áras, especially to the garden parties hosted by herself and her husband, Senator Martin McAleese, on the annual July 12th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.
It wasn’t just the toffs and upper middle-class unionists who were invited to receptions at her official residence in the Phoenix Park but ordinary folk as well: the plain people of Ulster.
Though shorter and less emotionally intense than the visit of Queen Elizabeth, the stopover by Barack Obama this year went off equally well and the US president and first lady were greeted at the Áras with the usual mixture of dignity and good humour.
Irish diplomats who have been part of the McAleese entourage on her foreign travels speak highly of her energy, intellectual capacity and grasp of legal and political issues.
“In her private discussions with heads of state and public addresses abroad, she gave people a higher sense of Ireland and the quality of the country,” says one former ambassador.
“As an Irish representative abroad, I was always immensely proud when she came on a visit,” says another senior diplomat who served in the London Embassy.
Suggestions that she was not always easy to deal with behind the scenes are rejected by several of those who worked with her, who say they “never saw an unpleasant side” to her character. “She is a person of strong views, but you can talk to her,” says one insider.
Her legal training came in useful in the important presidential function of assessing whether legislation presented for her signature should be referred to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality.
She has called meetings of the Council of State five times to advise her in this regard. But she has not exercised her power lightly and has only referred a Bill or sections of a Bill on two occasions, with one – an item of health legislation concerning the payment of certain charges by persons maintained in a hospital or home by a health board – being struck down by the court.
Nor has she forgotten the social dimension, paying particular attention to the problems of immigrants, the elderly, people with disabilities and others facing marginalisation even in the heady days of the Celtic Tiger.
She also took an initiative by including a trade dimension in her foreign trips, to promote bilateral economic and investment links with the country she was visiting.
Probably the best point that can be made about McAleese as President is that she grew into the job. In some ineffable way, this woman from another jurisdiction, whose life experience was so different from most of those in the crowd, managed to touch a nerve with the ordinary punter.
When Douglas Hyde was inaugurated as the first president in June 1938, taoiseach Éamon de Valera outlined his vision of the office as having a role similar to the chiefs of the clans in the Gaelic Ireland of former times, whose leadership was based on respect and affection rather than brute force.
As she comes to the end of two terms and 14 years in Áras an Uachtaráin, it is almost impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about our outgoing head of State.
If public esteem is the measure of a successful incumbency then McAleese scores just short of 100 per cent.
It is too early to say what her place in history will be, but she will certainly have one.