ALBERT saved Gerard's life that day. Had he remained on in Foreign Affairs, we both believe now that his health would have suffered. So Gerard was a backbencher from 1992 until he became an MEP two years later.

The spouse is much more affected when a politician loses his or her job. The politician can move on but the spouse must suffer in silence. That year, 1992, I went back to college to do an MA.

My parents were from Dublin but loved Killarney so much that they refused to go back to Dublin on promotion. I am very much a committed Kerry person. My parents brought me up to appreciate Kerry and to know that it's good to learn something new every day. I was taught to search for knowledge, as opposed to just education—acquisition of knowledge with a further aim. There are those with degrees and letters after their names falling off the end of the envelope, and they can focus on a number of subjects but may not know where the Amazon is.

My father was a Francophile. From the age of eight, every Thursday evening I was sat at the dining room table and Miss McSweeney would come and teach French. She had a good life and she died on the golf course at the age of 93. When I was 12, my parents took me to Paris for three weeks. It was wonderful, although, when I came home, I couldn't tell anyone at school that I had been to Paris. Continental languages were not considered very much in Ireland in those days.

I did my first degree in UCC and somehow my father managed to send me a cheque for £11 every fortnight. Of that, £8 went on digs. I augmented my income by becoming a waitress in the rest (college restaurant) for 10 shillings a week, but I got free dinners. I was left in no doubt that sacrifices had been made at home to send me to college.

I joined Newcastle West vocational school in 1968 under Eamonn O'Connell. Eamonn was a lovely man, a very innovative man. I left in 1970, and I did sub (substitute teacher) in Dublin during other teachers' flus, maternity leave and the like.

If I had worked through the '80s, when unemployment was high, I'd have been damned for taking another person's job. So I didn't, and I had to think that I had allowed another person to have a job in my place.
In 1987, when Gerard was in Justice, I went to Belfield and studied politics and sociology. We each thought that I'd like sociology and not politics, but I had no problem with politics because I was living it on a daily basis. I was just one of a number of mature students, and lecturers like Brian Farrell wouldn't know that a minister's wife was in a big lecture theatre. My classmates didn't know either. If I was asked whether I was married, I'd say yes, and change the subject. I wanted to be me.

Women are the great innovators. In Ireland of the 16th and 17th centuries they propelled their children into education—perhaps at the expense of the Irish language, but they knew that knowledge of English would be of benefit. Women had an independent income, however small, in Ireland; the woman had what was called "hen money", the money from the sale of poultry and eggs. That would allow her to buy a few things for the house. It was the same in Nepal when I went there with Gerard on a delegation which he led. The woman sold handcrafts for house management.

Do you know that you can sell the air rights above your property? When they were building Croke Park, the GAA bought the air rights to construct out over the canal. That's one of the things I learned when I went back to UCD to study planning. I think that they accepted me at my age as a challenge or an experiment. Going back to education can be intimidating, but my advice is to go for it. I think I've had it with the exam procedure at this stage, though. I'd like some day to do an M Phil in landscape.