It was a routine slot in the Dáil early on Thursday morning. Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke was taking oral questions from TDs.
Somebody asked him about mandatory health labelling on alcohol products. He replied the Government might defer its introduction because of the threat of US tariffs. Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney intervened to say she opposed putting the labels on the long finger. It was then that she disclosed to the chamber, and by extension to the public, her own relationship with alcohol.
“I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in 13½ years. Alcohol and its negative impacts have played a huge part in my life,” she told the Dáil.
Gibney had thought through what she would say and the fact she would be making this very public revelation to support her opposition to this rollback of policy. She had spoken publicly about her drinking in the past but knew that saying it in the Dáil would draw a different level of attention to her personally.
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The Social Democrats TD for Dublin-Rathdown has been perceived as a high achiever throughout her career, having been head of social action with Google Ireland and the chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. However, from her mid-teens to her mid-30s, she had a problematic relationship with alcohol.
“My drinking had always been too heavy. I had my first drink at 14. I was regularly drinking by the time I was 16. I’m not good at stopping.
“I was good craic, but I would always be the last person standing, and that’s not good for your health ... That pattern was always there, absolutely.”
Things came to a head in her mid-30s. She was a single mother, working in Google and studying for a master’s degree. “I had a busy social life and, like a lot of Irish people, I drank too much.
“It wasn’t detrimental to my friendships. I was a life-and-soul type of person but it was detrimental to me in terms of my own mental health. I had a lot of bad hangovers.”
There was no epiphany moment, no intervention. She decided to see if she could live her life without alcohol. She also wanted to be more present for her daughter, Bella, who was 11 at the time.
“I knew that I just wasn’t there for Bella in a way that I wanted to be. That was definitely part of my motivation.”
The comedian Des Bishop is her cousin and he had a destructive relationship with alcohol as a younger man. She talked to him frequently around this time.
“He helped me to reflect on my own drinking and what it was like in my life. That prompted self-reflection in me. And so I decided to test my life without alcohol.”
At the time, she did not describe it to herself as an addiction. “I saw myself as somebody who worked hard and played hard. I did not necessarily think I had a problem with alcohol.”
Nonetheless the drinking patterns were not healthy. “I might have a bottle of wine in the fridge that I would have over a few nights, and then sometimes I wouldn’t put the bottle away. On a weeknight, drinking a full bottle of wine is not good. The thing is it did not interfere with my work. It was much more impactful on my relationship with my daughter and, indeed, with myself.”
She had picked a date of mid-January 2012 to stop. But a “hard night” out just after Christmas, and a horrendous hangover, brought the date forward to New Year’s Eve. She has not taken alcohol since.
“I just bare-knuckled it. The thing about addiction is that when you take away the painkiller you feel the pain. I went into therapy a few months later and I had a brilliant therapist. I’ve been in therapy multiple times in my life. I’m a big fan of it and very open about it.
“I was dealing with stuff that arose because I gave up alcohol and that was why I needed that therapy journey.”
She said that people advised her she would probably not get a whole lot out of Alcoholics Anonymous at that time. “So I chose not to go. I did go to AA years later for a period and really found it very helpful. But at the time for me, therapy was a really good support in navigating through life without alcohol.”
She says she doesn’t tend to use the word alcoholic a lot mainly because of the reaction it provokes and because addiction is a complex topic.
“A lot of us have forms of addiction in our lives that we don’t really own up to. I think it was probably years later that I probably started to say the word alcoholic, but I did talk about addiction and recovery from quite soon after. My sobriety now is something I really treasure.”
The personal benefits were immeasurable. “It transformed my relationship with my daughter. I became so much more present, and the quality of time that we had together just shot up.”
The change was not without big challenges, though: “I now had to navigate social anxiety and how to be around people in a social setting without the crutch of alcohol.
“I spend a lot of time in my life working on my self-awareness. I do not feel that I would be here where I am today if I hadn’t made that choice around alcohol.
“I think there is a large amount of potential in this country that is untapped because of alcohol. People will hear my story, and hopefully some people will hear something similar to what they experience. Every single human should examine their relationship with alcohol.”
