Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Like previous speakers, I want to extend my condolences to Brian, Jacqueline, Garrett, Amanda and the rest of the family.

Nuala Fennell and myself had a very long association. Our lives crossed in unexpected and strange ways. I first met Nuala when I was a young law student in the early 1970s. I was involved in the Free Legal Advice Centres. At that time Nuala was a journalist writing about the impact on women of marital breakdown, the fact that no refuge existed for battered wives, the inadequacies of our laws, which dated back to 1886 and did not provide protection even for wives living in the home with their husbands who were not being properly supported. The experiences I had as the director of a Free Legal Advice Centre in Crumlin and, ultimately, as the chairman of the Free Legal Advice Centres fed into Nuala's journalism and her work on behalf of women, in particular in the area of family law reform.

The year 1972 was pivotal because two major reports were published for the first time in decades on the need to reform our marital laws and to provide greater protection for women. One was published by the Free Legal Advice Centres and the second was published by the AIM Group, of which Nuala was a founding member, whose objective essentially was to reform aspects of family law. The work that Nuala did with the AIM Group and that we in the Free Legal Advice Centres co-ordinated with her ultimately produced two important items of legislation, both of which, by coincidence, were enacted through this House by Paddy Cooney. The Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act 1976 was the first modern item of legislation to provide for the support of spouses who were not being properly supported. Section 22 of that Act provided the first ever legislative protection for battered wives. It was the first time our courts were able to make barring orders to protect wives who were the victims of violence. Without the campaigning work in which Nuala had been involved, I have no doubt that legislation would not have been passed.

The same year, the Family Home Protection Act, which is still very much part and parcel of family legislation, stopped the injustice of the possibility - where a home was held in the sole name of a husband and where there was marital difficulties - that a wife could come home one day to find a removal lorry outside the door and the home secretly sold in circumstances of which she was unaware. It seems extraordinary now that a wife could be in that position. Meetings publishing the predicament of wives by the AIM group and political pressure and lobbying by that group, and by Nuala Fennell in particular, and the Free Legal Advice Centres contributed to the creation and ultimate enactment of that legislation. At the same time in 1970s as I was dealing with wives in a Free Legal Advice Centre who were the victims of violence with nowhere to go, Nuala was taking the pioneering step of establishing a women's refuge for battered wives in Harcourt Street, a place I visited on many occasions. It was the opening of that refuge in Harcourt Street which laid the foundation ultimately for the Women's Aid organisation and the refuges we have today.

In 1979 Nuala ran for the European Parliament elections and, by coincidence, I ran for the local elections. In 1981 we found ourselves as both colleagues and competitors on the Fine Gael ticket in Dublin South. We ran five Fine Gael candidates in a five-seat constituency in those days, something all the tacticians now would tell us we should never do. We were predicting that Fine Gael would win three seats. The only journalist in the country who believed that was possible was Nuala Fennell. There was not a single political journalist who thought there was the remotest possibility that Fine Gael would win three seats in that constituency, but we did. We retained them through the two difficult elections of 1982 and subsequent to November 1982 Nuala became Minister of State with responsibility for women's affairs. As other speakers have said, a particular monument to her work as Minister of State was the ultimate enactment of the Status of Children Act in 1987, which abolished the concept of illegitimacy which had remained far too long part of Irish law and which sought to put children in a position of equality in the context of the general statute law. Nuala remained part and parcel of Fine Gael in Dublin South until her retirement in 1992 and, as everyone has said, played a distinguished and courageous role in this House.

Deputy Gilmore is also correct in stating that some of the battles Nuala fought in those days still remain to be fought. I can remember us being at a joint press conference in the early 1970s describing the inadequacies of the courts system and the need to establish a family court - a unified family court structure to deal sensitively and comprehensively with family problems - and to this day we still do not have that structure. No doubt Nuala, if she was still with us today, would be writing yet again about these issues as they become current in the political world.

Nuala made an outstanding contribution to this House, she made an outstanding contribution to the Fine Gael Party and she made a pioneering and outstanding contribution, not only in the women's movement but as a journalist. She wrote in the 1970s about many issues that other journalists were not interested in writing about and she went to the trouble to research them and write accurately about them. It was that work of hers that laid the foundation for many of the reforms that took place through the 1980s and led to a very different Ireland and women in this country being placed truly in a position of equality in areas where for far too long they had been treated not merely as unequal, but not even recognised as persons with needs to be addressed. Nuala will forevermore have a place in the history of this country and in the history of the women's movement for her contribution to law reform.

As Deputy Mitchell stated, she will be missed greatly by all of her family, but particularly by Brian. There was hardly a meeting of a Fine Gael branch in Dublin South constituency that Brian missed during Nuala's years as a TD and Senator. As we did the constituency trail, Brian was extraordinary to the extent to which he attended meetings and provided assistance; quite clearly they were a couple who were extraordinarily attached to each other. I offer Brian, Jacqueline, Amanda and Garrett my sincerest condolences. I wish the family well. May Nuala rest in peace.

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