Fionnuala, instrumental in all of Enda’s successes
Historians will argue about Enda Kenny’s legacy, but there is no dispute about his wife’s place in history. Fionnuala O’Kelly is the template for a modern political spouse – selfless partner, doting mother and the sort of self-effacing adviser who convinces others that her clever ideas are their own.
Looking back over the 40 years I have known her, I can say without hesitation that Fionnuala is one of the most capable and impressive people I’ve met in Irish public life. Yet she went to extraordinary lengths to go unnoticed and let others take credit for her initiatives.
And the hallmarks of her social skills were discretion and inspiration – a mirror of her professional talents. For instance, in 1989 she rang me and asked if I was covering the Fine Gael ard fheis later that day. No, I was going to the RDS the next day. She said I’d be doing her a favour if I met her there at 8.30pm.
It was her first public appearance at a Fine Gael function with her boyfriend Enda Kenny, a TD from Mayo much loved by the party matrons. She worked for the then taoiseach Charles Haughey and her own family was steeped in Fianna Fáil.
She feared being left standing alone while Enda was busy at the function, ignored by suspicious Fine Gael women. ‘All you have to do is stand beside me so I have someone to talk to,’ she said.
I had been one of the few around Leinster House who knew she was dating Enda. To avoid gossip, they could not appear together in public. Political rivals dating was the love that dare not speak its name in the late 1980s.
Eventually, Enda and Fionnuala only had eyes for each other – and he had made the best judgment of his life, personal and professional. He was clearly smitten by her sophistication and intelligence; she was taken by his boyish good looks and irreverent sense of humour, yet challenged by his playboy reputation.
She learned lessons from her bosses, PJ Mara and Haughey, that were not taught at political seminars or in business colleges. Fionnuala was also an attractive and charming polyglot; she was, and is, the convent school-educated daughter of the secretary general of a government department who was also a Fianna Fáil grandee.
Lounge bar lotharios saw her as ‘thinking man’s crumpet’ but she was just as street smart as she was cerebral. Here’s an example of her anticipating and diverting potential trouble. Her boss, PJ Mara, was on a visit to Australia with the taoiseach when she rang me and asked if I would give her a lift to the airport.
She did not want to get a taxi and said her plan would make sense when I heard her reasoning. I picked her up and she reminded me about a mischievous item in a Sunday newspaper gossip column linking Mara romantically with a wealthy socialite.
FIONNUALA explained that PJ’s wife had seen the article and might confront him at the airport; she was angry. Fionnuala said that if she and I stood beside PJ’s wife, she would be less likely to create a fuss in public. The scene at the airport was like old newsreels of Third World leaders being greeted by nervous lackeys: members of the Cabinet lined up at the bottom of the aircraft steps to welcome the taoiseach home and looked at me quizzically. An apprehensive Mara left the plane after the rest of the party and we flanked his wife as he greeted her. A potential public embarrassment was averted.
Fionnuala O’Kelly’s emotional intelligence was as formidable as her intellect and disguising it meant she did not intimidate men in politics who were distrustful of clever women. She could play coy, coquettish or the iron woman – whatever the occasion demanded.
And she was fiercely protective of Enda, who knew she had more than the measure of him; she was his most treasured political asset as well as the love of his life.
Fionnuala O’Kelly was the first woman ever to be appointed head of the Government Information Service when she became engaged in 1990. And after she married Enda in January 1992, she became head of public affairs at RTÉ. Commuting by train between Castlebar and Dublin was exhausting.
THEIR first child, Aoibhinn, was born in October 1992; Ferdia in 1994, and their youngest son Naoise in 1996 when Fionnuala took a year’s leave from RTÉ before settling full-time in Castlebar. I met her from time to time but she never grumbled about rural life and was keen to catch up on ‘who’s doing what to whom’ among our friends and in politics.
Experience learned in Fianna Fáil’s no-holds-barred leadership heaves against Haughey was bootcamp training for the more mannerly squabbles her husband encountered in Fine Gael.
Enda seemed to become leader of the party almost by default in 2002 when Fine Gael was close irrelevance; her counsel was invaluable to his subsequent political success. She appeared by his side meeting the three US presidents, the pope and other world leaders, never fazed and always a charming, modern model of propriety.
It is awkward for a reporter having a friend married to a successful politician who inevitably becomes the butt of robust criticism. And when I met her, Fionnuala would playfully tell me to lay off Enda; but she never complained. And when he became Taoiseach, critiques of him were more pointed.
Pundits will debate for years about whether Enda Kenny is a great man but this is undisputed: an exceptional woman was covering his back.