“I would say I had post-traumatic stress”

“I didn’t wake up at 15 – unlike some people – and want to be Taoiseach.”

Frances Fitzgerald’s journey in politics has been different to many of the people she worked alongside.

The time when she felt her career was at an end was also a relatively rare occurrence in Irish politics. The Charleton Tribunal described her as resigning “selflessly” in the national interest.

But the scars from that decision remain. In the second episode of Experience, Frances Fitzgerald talked about her resignation, the populist politics she felt drove it and her own journey into politics.

Her resignation in 2017 was the moment in her career that scarred, the moment that she felt she had no career anymore.

Fitzgerald was Tánaiste when she resigned, a decision she says she took without any urging from anyone in the party. In fact, she said a number of colleagues wanted to fight an election on the issue.But she did resign, and it did leave a mark, leading her to vocality on the dangers of populism.

“In a populist way, you have opposition leaders using phrases that ‘you stood idly by’ and all of this type of thing, which of course was the exact opposite of what I had done, then you began to get this wave of emotion…it was really impossible. It needed an outlet and the outlet was my resignation.”

The public anger at the treatment of Maurice McCabe undoubtedly contributed to that wave of emotion. Fitzgerald was cleared by the Charleton Inquiry which said she made a “considered response” to emails sent to her referring to the O’Higgins Commission, but in November 2017 she was drawn into what she refers to as a “saga”.

“It was horrendous, I was at the highest point of my career. I was totally committed to the work I was doing, I really enjoyed being Minister for Business, I was very privileged to have been made Tánaiste, by Enda Kenny and by Leo Varadkar. And to suddenly…the resignation…it just came out of the blue, to be honest. It was totally shocking and very traumatic and very difficult.”

She became exercised by the use of Dáil Privilege, calling it defamation laundering, but the reality of defamation laws in Ireland arguably makes Dáil privilege more important than ever.

It was, however, a wounding time.

“In a funny sort of way, what was even more difficult was that I had to prepare a statement for the tribunal. So I had to prepare…I couldn’t think straight and I had to prepare a submission and I had to appear before a tribunal in February, this was November. 

“So that sort of began to focus me slowly but surely over the Christmas period, but it was a complete shock. I would say I had post-traumatic stress, for a couple of weeks anyway. I just wasn’t able to think straight because it’s complete….your career is just gone.”

Politics wasn’t going to be her career. In Dublin and then London she was a social worker, working with vulnerable children, looking at the consequences of absenteeism on the most marginalised.

In England, she was on a picket line. “We got paid our salaries, which made it a lot easier to strike,” she says and, unlike some in her party, she didn’t like what Margaret Thatcher was doing.

“I wouldn’t have admired Thatcher. Fine Gael has caught up with me. I was the person in Fine Gael working on social issues. I was more centre, left of centre than the party was in some ways.”

Others might feel that Fine Gael has moved away from those traditions or that, having achieved victories in the areas of equality, the party has little to attract people who might be coming from a similar place as Fitzgerald today who want fairness in housing and other areas. Would someone with her career path today look at Fine Gael and say that’s a party I want to join. “I’m not sure they’d look at any of the parties and say that particularly,” she says.

She ran for Fine Gael at the urging of Garret Fitzgerald and became a TD in 1992.

Ten years later she would lose her seat, something she says is blamed on the candidate by the party. 

Politicians are expected to be bullet proof, something she says is, “nonsense, complete nonsense.” 

Politicians’ feelings are not something most people want to consider. Perhaps that’s understandable but it probably ignores a reality.

“The idea that you don’t feel everything that’s said or written about you, of course it impacts you. But you learn to deal with it.”