This article is from page 8 of the 2006-12-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
IT is the sense of freedom that Síle deValera is looking forward to most. To be able to decide to go to the cinema on a Thursday or meet friends on a Tuesday at short notice is the simple, but until not unattainable pleasures, that the retiring TD has to look forward to most.
For the next five or six months however it will be business as usual in the constituency as her diary is dictated by a busy political schedule.
Speaking to The Clare People just the day after she stood down as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy deValera was slightly hoarse from one of the many winter colds in the air and as busy as ever.
She was conscious of easing the slight aliment quickly as that night she had a Cumann function in Spancilhill and a women’s lunch the following day.
Despite the slight hoarseness however the former minister sounded happy and jovial and completely at ease with her decision to retire from politics.
She described how fortunate she felt and how she looked forward to a new life.
“I am lucky in a way as a lot of politicians don’t get the opportunity to decide when they are leaving politics.”
Working as a TD for the next five to six months is the “nice part of it all” she said very much at ease with the change in her life.
The former Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands maintains that making the decision not to run in the next election was the biggest decision.
“Working for nine and a half years as minister and then minister of state there is a weight lifted off my shoulders today. With the office there is a sense of obligation and duty and I feel I have done that,” she said.
When asked about the “warts and all” book on political life she plans to write, the 52-year-old breaks into a hearty laugh.
With 30 years of politics, including the Lynch, Haughey and Ahern eras, the impoverished 1980s and the prosperity of the late 1990s under her political belt, publishers and political nerds are already drooling at the thought of such memoirs.
Her voice retains the mirth as she describes how she got yet another phonecall from a publisher shortly after telling a radio programme she already had a number of publishers interested.
Deputy deValera has already begun writing the book and “thinking about it’”.
“Over the last 30 years since I first went in to the Dáil there have been a lot of changes. The state of flux in the late seventies and eighties and the poor economy.”
“People who were not TDs in the late 1980s and early 90s are lucky to have only experienced the good times of telling people how good things are going to be.”
Deputy deValera is also conscious of the fact that there are very few women in the Dáil and 30 years of political change does not seem to have changed that fact.
Once fully retired, Síle deValera is looking forward to planning life for herself and having a social life, but she is adamant that she is not complaining about the political life she had.
It is just time for change.
“I hope to have another career as something else,” she said referring to her continued study of psychology.