“Put me in the Driving Seat” – says European election candidate Mary E Fitzgibbon (Independent)
An overnight stay in the cottage home of a European election hopeful
“It’s a bit like our relationship with Europe at the moment,” Mary Fitzgibbon says of her blue and white 1961 Wolseley. “It’s costly, it’s rather tedious and it’s not really serving us. That’s why I’m asking you to put me in the driving seat.”
In an interview during the 2011 General Elections, Mary told a reporter she wanted to be able to look her children in the eye and say with honesty “I tried.”
Then aged 41 and a mother of four, Mary was mothering three boys and a girl all under ten years of age. Thirteen years later, she has one more reason to run. Her youngest baby Philip, has just turned 11 and has vacated his bed for the night to accommodate a visit from this Substack.
Much has changed in Ireland over the last thirteen years, but Mary’s motivation remains the same. A registered general nurse and midwife and a lecturer in nursing and health care sciences in MTU Kerry, she has built up years of significant insight.
Driving down a grassy boreen flanked by blooming hawthorn and buttercups, a couple of things strike me. The Fitzgibbon family has been living for many years a way of life that many grew to aspire to during covid. Home-schooling and hens on a hidden rural homestead, she and her Derry-born husband Michael laid these loose plans during their courtship and have effectively lived a somewhat ‘back-to-nature’ lifestyle for 25 years.
I’m impressed by how far off the beaten track she actually is. Passing the family home of internet comedy star Tadhg Fleming (whom Mary helped birth), in the civil parish of Ballymacelligot, outside Tralee, I’ve to stop and ask further directions once the GPS leads me to a derelict farmyard. It’s raining lightly in the fading evening light when her two oldest children appear in the lane and direct me on to a 200 year old cottage farmhouse among the trees.
Mary emerges from the cottage and we sit down at the table to discuss the campaign, her reasons for running – this time in the European election.
“As a nurse and a midwife and as mother and a wife, I see things very much from the human perspective. I look at how European legislation is impacting people at a human level and I have had the privilege over the last 36 years of seeing people at the beginning of their lives – working in hospitals, delivering babies, caring for them as they journey through life and what goes with it – trauma, addiction, illnesses, cancer diagnoses, disabilities such as Down syndrome, then looking after people in ICU and then I have been privileged to look after people as they depart this life, for life eternal,” she said.
“I am a carer and I would like to serve in Europe both from a caring perspective and also as a professional who serves. My whole professional life has been to serve others.”
“As a mother I would like to see more pro-family policies. We have a demographic implosion. We need to have more babies across Europe and we need to put in tax incentives because if there are no babies there is no future and as the family goes, so goes society,” she said.
Mary and barrister Una McGurk are the only two females running in the Ireland South constituency for the European election. They will appear side by side tonight at a public meeting in Macroom beginning at 7.30pm.
Offering a choice between fresh banana bread (the secret is over ripe bananas) and Philip’s chocolate birthday cake, Mary is talking politics while conducting kitchen multi-tasks. The dishwasher is emptied, the counter cleared and supper consumed while she talks about what’s going wrong in the world. Seeing her students emigrating, mostly to Australia touches a nerve.
“They qualify here but there’s a moratorium on the hiring of Irish staff. It’s all contract staff hired through agencies now. They have nowhere to live so they leave. And in Australia, one young woman not long departed said she has a ratio of four patients for each nurse. That’s a completely different work environment to here,” she said.
The mother/carer theme continues as Mary takes me to see her cat Daphne nursing three newborn kittens in a semi-renovated stone barn next door. Most of the family are here. Two teenage boys playing ping-pong, Gianna, the only daughter working on her end of year art project and a husband on a ladder at the far wall.
Philip, the birthday boy, offers me a kitten to examine. It makes tiny meowing noises and discussion turns to Daphne’s well-being. Has she eaten? Is she warm enough? Did she sleep?
Mary and I take a walk down the lane before dark and then return to say the Rosary before bedtime. This is a nightly ritual in which the whole family gather. I’m kind of honoured that they include my intentions as we kneel to pray in candlelight.
This family strikes me as profoundly counter-cultural. During my time there I saw only one smartphone, Gianna was painting a picture of her friend stored on the device. The children are bright and engaging, there are disagreements and dialogue, but no fighting.
Next morning, I’m up early and come down to find the circular table set for breakfast. I don’t know why I get a bit emotional seeing that, something so ordinary but almost old-fashioned now.
“Do you think your mam will win a seat?” I ask Philip over breakfast.
“No,” he answers candidly. “It’s a huge constituency and not enough people know her. Maybe in the general election she could become a TD,” he said. (He has just turned 11!)
His older brother Stephen asks if I drink coffee and then serves up a restaurant grade cappuccino, complete with frothy milk. Michael talks about the renovation of the old cottage, a two-bedroom stone farmhouse with sash windows and a slate floor. Tralee is a ten minute drive away.
Later, I find Mary on her knees sorting washing at the dryer. Running for a seat in the Ireland South election is no glamourous business. She’s been on the road almost constantly attending meetings, hustings and canvassing, while maintaining her full time job as the household breadwinner. She appears to breeze through all this mayhem, rosy cheeked and full of reason, the mother in her seeing the world from multiple angles.
She advocates a return to legal immigration and questions the government line that there is no correlation between immigration and crime rates. “On radio I said this data needed to be collated - but if Europe is anything to go by there is a strong correlation,” she said.
“What is happening not only locally but in Europe is not in Ireland’s interests and really we are fed up of the Tik Tok and celebrity videos from the establishment parties. We need a seismic shift. We need to vote them all out on June 7. We need to reclaim sovereignty and control immigration, protect our neutrality, support families, farmers and small business,” she said.
Abortion is a key issue for this candidate, she is well known and well acquainted with the pro-life movement in Ireland.
On Thursday April 11 2024, 12 of Ireland’s 13 MEP’s voted in favour of a resolution to enshrine abortion as a human right in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. This will facilitate abortion through all nine months of pregnancy up to birth.
“As a midwife in London I worked where there were abortions carried out up to birth for even cleft lip and talipes, there was approximately one late abortion a week. It was not only barbaric but beyond cruel with no pain relief,” Fitzgibbon posted on X with the hashtags #feticide #potassiumchloride #abortion #life.
In conversation we discuss the report from researchers who found that babies born alive after abortions at CUH were being left to die without care because - what does a doctor do at this point? The image of a little baby left to die on a cold plinth surrounded by the quiet chaos of medical professionals unable to care is surely indicative that something has gone profoundly wrong.
As her family gather up coats and get ready to depart for the day ahead, Mary and I sit into her classic car and conduct a quick interview. I sneak into the barn to say goodbye to Daphne and the kittens and then its away off to Latin Mass in Tralee.
Like myself, Mary and her family were among those to depart their local parish mass for the Sacred Heart Church in Limerick for Latin Mass during covid. I didn’t know her and never met her there, but we were very glad of a place to pray that wasn’t populated by well-meaning mask enthusiasts.
Our first meeting was at an invite-only health conference featuring speakers Robert F Kennedy Jr and Dr Robert Malone in North County Dublin, the subject of the first published article on this Substack.
Mary opposed mandatory vaccination among her students and stood by those being punished for their stance.
“I am against mandatory vaccination, lockdowns and enforced mask wearing. We have seen now through research studies how these policies have harmed many people,” she said.
“An ethical principle is the principle of informed consent and one which I fully endorse as a lecturer in research ethics and a principle I believe all health professionals should support,” she said.
“Students who declined 'Covid 19 vaccination' were unable to continue their courses. Students reached out to lecturers and I supported them in starting the HEI Consent Group. Press releases were issued and politicians were contacted. Just over a week later mandatory vaccination was rescinded in part due to the Astra Zeneca being withdrawn from use for the younger age groups. However later mandatory vaccination was reintroduced and many students ended up deferring their courses or were unable to complete their courses.”
“A group of health care professionals for informed consent including me, helped them in everyway possible both psychologically and financially. I have the utmost respect for all those nursing, midwifery, medical, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, radiography etc. students who held fast to the principle of informed consent despite the threats, bullying and intimidation. Their principles cost them but the truth always has a future,” she said.
In contrast to this spirited championing of human rights, Mary and her team are faced with a new challenge among the voting public. Outside the church in Tralee, we meet some of the Fitzgibbon canvass team, who describe a concerning level of indifference.
“There’s a surprising level of apathy, especially among the younger age groups - twenties, thirties, forties - they are saying they just don’t care, that they’re not interested and won’t be voting. There is anger there, at the way they’ve been treated and it’s understandable, but they want nothing to do with politics,” one lady said.
After Holy Mass I light a candle for the Fitzgibbons, my kind hosts in the Kingdom, for whatever is the best outcome for the family. It might look like she needs a miracle and who knows, maybe that will be granted. But more importantly for now, she (and others) are using the election platform to raise multiple issues the establishment would rather ignore and for that we voters should be grateful.
Listen to Mary E Fitzgibbon on Tipp FM with Fran Curry and on the Gript Meet the Candidates Podcast with John McGuirk.
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Great to see more candidates running. My only worry and fear is that they don't fully understand the problem and therefore cannot solve it.
Deportations and even jailing both our politicians and those in the EU wouldn't be enough to stop this. There's a group of people who push migration across the west and they have even admitted to it yet people are still ignorant
Thanks, Louise for this beautifully written article about Mary Fitzgibbon and her lovely family. I actually wish that candidates like her were running for the Dáil, not for the European Parliament. I think the European Parliament is a pit of lost causes into which genuinely ethical candidates will fall, never to be seen again. To make things worse, Mary who is clearIy a woman of remarkable ability and courage, will be lost to her students. I personally believe that working with young people is the only way in which we can fundamentally build change. Nevertheless, I wish her the best.