Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

On behalf of the Fine Gael Party and my colleagues, I welcome to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery the husband and family of the late Nuala Fennell, former Deputy, Senator and Minister who served in this House with distinction from 1981until 1987, in Seanad Éireann from 1987 until 1989 and again in the Dáil from 1989 until 1992.

I cannot really describe Nuala Fennell and her work any better than she described it herself. It is a testament to her life and career that, despite her illness, she put pen to paper and completed her political memoir, Nuala Fennell: Political Woman - A Memoir, just a few weeks before she passed away. Those who take the time at the back end of the year to read her political memoir will note it is a beautiful book about a beautiful person, as I described at the launch. Nuala Fennell described herself in the book as having to contend with her own mother's dilemma, which involved being one of the footsoldiers in a vast army of suburban housewives. She was part of an irreversible movement that made the status of women a political issue for the first time in Ireland. Reading her book invites one to consider the marriage ban that applied to women and the fact that women were owned as chattels and that one had to have a second signatory for cheques and books from libraries. People could not visualise now the circumstances that obtained in the 1950s and 1960s. Nuala described the loneliness of being part of what she deemed an almost exclusively male club during her first period in the Dáil. She expressed this sense of loneliness when going about her work here as an elected Member.

With regard to the AIM movement, encompassing action, information and motivation, Nuala Fennell made the point in her story that, in respect of family law legislation, including the Maintenance Orders Act 1974, not enough recognition was given to the then Minister for Justice, Mr. Patrick Cooney. She made an outstanding contribution as a politician to increasing awareness of domestic violence and the necessity to provide shelter, through the women's aid movement, for battered wives and those at the receiving end of male domestic violence. When she subsequently stood for election as an Independent in 1977, she received more than 3,800 votes and was elected in 1981 and re-elected in both elections of 1982. Those of us who were here in that period remember the many stirring events and tension-filled occasions in the early 1980s. Nuala Fennell was here for all of that.

When she was appointed, in 1982, as Minister of State with responsibility for women's affairs, she found there was no plan, no blueprint, no budget, no recognition and no office. When she spoke to the Secretary General of the Department of Justice he suggested that it would be better for her to work from the Department of the Taoiseach, to which she was assigned. She replied that she had lots of things to do which were relevant to the Department of Justice and that if she did not have an office, he might find her a broom cupboard from which she could do her business. She later referred to her excitement, the following week, at finding a large office made available to her. Her small budget allocation of £50,000 seems infinitesimal now. Yet, that allocation, and her work as Minister of State, led to great things during her term and subsequently. It is a measure of the society we then had that the late Archbishop Dermot Ryan, she tells us in her book, refused to have his photograph taken with her. She was centrally responsible for the abolition of the concept of illegitimacy in Ireland and in establishing a mediation scheme for those who marriages had broken down.

Hers is a story of the journey of Irish life from the 1950s until her passing. She was supported in an outstanding way by her husband, Brian. Having lived in Canada for a number of years and returned here as a journalist and later a politician, she was a woman who played her part. She was a wife, citizen, politician, Minister, advocate and a really good person. The Irish Times described her as "courageous, determined and with an original mind". She made a real difference.

I welcome her husband, Brian, her son Garrett and her daughters, Jacqueline and Amanda to the House. As we do on such important occasions, I pay tribute and respect to her and salute the work of someone who went through the constituency of Dublin South on many occasions knocking on doors and who served, with Deputy Shatter and the late Deputy John Kelly, the good people of that constituency for many years. It is only when people leave that we begin to examine the work they do. I met Nuala Fennell on many occasions in the corridors of this house but one does not understand the attributes and qualities of a person until one has to concentrate on what to say in tribute to them. To her husband and family, I say we salute a really good person who did a first class job in representing politics and the problems of people and who made an outstanding change in legislation and to women's rights and their involvement in politics. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dhílis.

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