Herogram - Mná na hÉireann

At Woman’s Way we don’t wait for International Women’s Day (March 8) to celebrate women. That’s our job all year long and we love it. But – given the day that’s in it – we’re giving special shout outs to women who have inspired us over what has been a very tough year. These are women who’ve made us laugh, cry, love and, most of all, remember why it’s so wonderful to be part of that special band of women known as Mná na hÉireann.

Our frontline workers take pride of place this year in any celebration of Irish women. Whether doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, carers, home helps, cleaners, supermarket assistants – the list is endless - these are the women who have worked tirelessly from the start of this pandemic to protect and care for our most vulnerable and ensure we all had the basics. Many of these women are not particularly well paid or, in previous times, valued. Yet when we needed them most, they stepped up and kept the rest of us going.

We could fill the entire magazine with examples of these women, but let’s just highlight one, to remind us of the hard work, sacrifice and dedication of so many.

Sinead Moloney works in the endocrine unit of Dublin’s Temple Street children’s hospital. She’s barely missed a day’s work in her 14 year career there, and certainly not during the pandemic. When not working, she cares for her two children and keeps in close contact with elderly relatives living alone. Her 70-year-old aunt Patricia Lordan nominated her for the Irish Independent’s Frontline Star of the Week. Sinead posted me little treats on a regular basis, like hand cream, simnel cake and chocolate, some jewellery she thought I'd like," said Ms Lordan.

Sinead says that dealing with the pandemic was tough but she loves her work. "I'm not more deserving than any other frontline worker at the moment. It's nurses, doctors, the cleaning, porter staff, as well as a bus driver or people working in a shop," she said.

Among all the experts flooding the airwaves in the last year, when the Covid pandemic became the top news story, day after endless lock down day, one voice stood out. Professor Karina Butler, chair of National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC), has consistently been a rock of sense amid confusing and sometimes contradictory guidance. In recent times she has insisted that there will be no delay in rolling out the vaccine. More importantly, she has refused to rule out the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on people over 70 on the basis that it would protect people from becoming seriously ill and being hospitalised. 

“If there are going to be significant delays, the best vaccine is the one that is available to you at the time,” she said recently on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland. 

A paediatrician by training, she is a world expert in paediatric HIV/AIDs and played a leading role in the introduction of the HPV vaccine to Ireland.

While we may moan about politicians, a handful of female politicos showed genuine leadership this past year. Who will forget that wonderful moment when our own Mairead McGuinness, then serving as the first vice-president of the European Parliament, cut off Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s microphone in the chamber.  

“If you disobey the rules, you get cut off,” she announced to the Union Jack waving populist. “Put your flags away. You’re leaving, and take the flags with you if you are leaving now.”

McGuinness, now European Commissioner for Financial Stability, did us all proud during the Brexit negotiations, speaking clearly and sensibly to the British public during numerous interviews with UK media. 

Noeline Blackwell

Independent TD Catherine Connolly captured the anger and frustration of many in her speech to the Dáil on the publication of the Mother and Baby Home report. She pointed out that not a single survivor had been given a copy of the report. Instead they were invited to a webinar. “Inconsistent, shocking, poorly written, disturbing… I find the whole thing absolutely repulsive, to tell the truth,” she said of the report.

She listed out 20 years-worth of government reports and formal State apologies in to the abuse suffered by vulnerable women and children in Ireland. There was Bertie Ahern’s apology in 1999 to those who suffered institutional child abuse. The Ferns report, the Murphy report, the Cloyne report and the Magdalene report followed. And she rejected the notion that somehow we were all responsible for the wrong doing. “I am not responsible. My family is not responsible. The people I know are not responsible. Those least responsible were those put into the homes.”

Connolly, who is the first woman to serve as Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the Dáil, has represented the Galway West constituency since 1916. She has previously served as Mayor of Galway. 

The dignity and fortitude of Dublin Lord Mayor Hazel Chu in the face of on-going racist harassment is profoundly inspiring. Hazel, a Green Party councillor, is the first Irish-born Chinese person to hold the office, having been the first Irish-born Chinese person to be called to the Irish Bar. “If people are against my policies, against Covid [policies], if they want to air their views, I’m absolutely happy to take it, but you do need a reason why you’re there protesting. It can’t just be because they don’t like the look of me – I can’t change those things,” she said after protests at the Mansion House in Dublin.

Courage shines through even in the most dispiriting moments. The once secret horrors of the Mother and Baby institutions stand in stark contrast to the bravery of women determined to shine a light on these dark places. Noelle Brown was born in one such place, Cork’s Bessborough and was adopted at eight weeks. She wrote a play Postscript about her search for her birth family and the brick walls she encountered in the process. “We're still going through it, we're still carrying the shame,” she says.

Elizabeth Coppin was born in a Mother and Baby home and survived three Magdalene Laundries. At 70, she’s still fighting for the truth to be told. She took a case to the United Nations torture committee regarding her detention in a Magdelene Laundry. “I was persecuted, my mum was persecuted, millions of Irish women and children were persecuted,” she says.

And, of course, there’s the wonderful Catherine Corless, the amateur historian who discovered that the bodies of 800 children were lying part of the sewage system of a home in Tuam.

Irish women bought fame rather than infamy to the country this past year. The novelist 

Sally Rooney had her second novel adapted for TV and sales of O’Neills GAA shorts, the staple of many an Irish lad’s wardrobe, shot through the roof. Normal People was a standout hit and made a superstar of Maynooth actor Paul Mescal. The series has been nominated for a Golden Globe and fans worldwide are demanding a second season. 

Talking of US awards ceremonies, the Irish conductor and composer Eimear Noone made history when she became the first woman to conduct the orchestra at the Oscars in Los Angeles. Born in Galway, Eimear said of the ceremony that she “wanted little Irish girls to see it and just go, 'Yay! I can do that!'".

Catherine Connolly

Louth violinist Patricia Treacy played at what was certainly the event of the year, US President Joe Biden’s inauguration in Washington. It wasn’t her first time to entertain the former Vice President. She played for him on St Patrick’s day in 2016 and again that year on his unofficial tour of the Cooley peninsula. He even phoned Patricia’s mother when he heard what an inspiration she had been to her daughter’s career. 

Irish singers and musicians excelled themselves over the last year. Up to 39 joined forces to record Dolores O’Riordan’s Dreams in aid of Safe Ireland, an organisation that aims to make Ireland the safest place for women and children in the world. Imelda May, Una Healy and Wyvern Lingo were among a host of amazing singers and musicians who participated. Domestic violence has been on the increase since the pandemic started.

Two new rising acts set to make waves this year are Dublin-based Indie band Pillow Queens and Limerick based rapper, Denise Chalia. Girl guitar band with attitude, Pillow Queens. recently appeared on James Cordon’s US chat show The Late Late Show. They’ve just signed with a uber-cool new Seattle-based record label and have been nominated for a Choice Music Prize. Denise Chalia is a poet and performer extraordinaire as well as a rapper. Born in Zambia, she blends the cúpla focal with riffs on identity and borders. Check out her single Anseo on YouTube. It’s a sad reflection on certain sections of Irish society that Denise, like Helen Chu (and a host of other non-white Irish people), has had to deal with racist abuse. We’re better than that.

As Elton John once mused ‘sorry seems to be the hardest word’. In the past year two women demanded and received apologies for the way they’d been treated in the past, highlighting yet again the huge hypocrisy of yesterday’s Ireland. In the 1980s, Garda recruit Majella Moynihan became pregnant at the age of 22 and found herself being interrogated by her superiors because – pass the smelling salts! – she was not married. She revealed in an interview with RTÉ that she was threatened with disciplinary action and even dismissal. At least she got an apology from both the Minster for Justice and the Garda Commissioner. 

Anyone who grew up in the 1980s will remember the endless news reports on what was called the ‘Kerry Babies Scandal’, as though somehow the babies were the problem. Misogyny, sexual hypocrisy and prurience were the real culprits. Joanne Hayes, a single mother of a young girl, was erroneously accused of killing her new born baby. A tribunal into how the Gardai botched the investigation turned into an exercise in public humiliation for Joanne. She too finally got an apology. 

The hundreds of women affected by the cervical smear debacle have still not gotten an apology. “I’ve bigger battles to fight,” says Lynsey Bennet, who is now seriously ill with cervical cancer despite being told repeatedly that her smears were clear. She recently settled a High Court action and has gone to Mexico for treatment. Meanwhile terminally ill Vicky Phelan, whose legal case led to the issue finally being dragged into the public eye, is in the US fighting her own battle. She’s currently undergoing a clinical trial with a new ‘wonder drug’.  

‘If she can see it, she can be it,’ was the slogan for the hugely successful 20x20 women in sport campaign, the brainchild of Sarah Colgan and Heather Thornton, co-founders of creative agency Along Came A Spider. The aim was to boost attendance, increase media coverage and grow involvement in women’s sport by 20 per cent. Among the ambassadors for the hugely successful campaign was Irish international footballers Katie McCabe who plays for Arsenal and Louise Quinn who plays for the Italian club Fiorentina. 

Boxer Katie Taylor showed us that you can’t keep a good woman down. The undefeated world lightweight champion is rocking it as a professional boxer and has recently scooped several major awards, including the World Boxing Council’s 2020 female boxer of the year. 

Sanita Puspure was born in Latvia but moved to Ireland is 2006 and has been representing us in rowing since 2010. She is the reigning world champion in the women’s single scull.

From Derry girl Clare Devlin to Penelope Featherington of Bridgerton, Galway-born actor Nicola Coughlan has range. We’re already looking forward to seeing her in Season 2 of both series. Meanwhile fellow Derry Girls actor Siobhán McSweeney is presenting the Great Pottery Throwdown on Channel 4 to great acclaim.

Professor Karina Butler

Attitudes to sexual abuse and harassment have thankfully changed in the last few years and Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is at the forefront of speaking truth to power on the issue. She’s been outspoken on the problem of sexual assault in colleges and, most recently, on the appallingly low number of convictions for rape. While there was a 35 per cent increase in rape prosecutions in 2020, Noeline has pointed out that only 14 per cent of rapes reported to the gardai end up in court. “That’s a very tiny percentage of cases. You have to recognise many people never report a rape to the gardai at all,” she says.

As Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, Helen Dixon, has been taking on the big tech giants, with 27 separate investigations into multinationals like WhatsApp and Facebook currently underway. Twitter has already faced a €450,000 fine for breaches of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Salome MBunga became the first Africa-born woman to be appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. A human rights activist, Salome arrived in Ireland in 1994 and founded the Migrant Women’s Network.

In the food sector, New Zealand-born Jess Murphy is best known for running the Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant, Kai in Galway. But there’s a lot more to her than that. She has worked on food programmes for people in direct provision as well as teaming up with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Beirut and Jordan. Since lockdown, she has been active helping out her community, including finding customers for a local fisherman with excess stock.

Laois woman, Aisling Donoher, pulled off the near impossible when she set up a GoFundMe page to help her toddler son Dan get ground-breaking treatment in the US for a rare neuromuscular disease. The Do it for Dan campaign raised nearly €3 million, netting Aisling an Inspirational Hero award from Gala Retail and Virgin Media. 

Galway girl Saoirse Ruane stole many a heart when she appeared on the Late Late Toy Show Appeal. The nine-year-old had her leg amputated last year because of a cancerous tumour. Her bravery and positivity were an inspiration. 

Cork artist Leanne McDonagh explored the bonds of family within the Traveller community in her artworks for the RTÉ Illuminations online exhibition. The photographs, in her signature colourful, abstract style depicts grandparents and their grandchildren, as well as a group of girls hanging out together McDonagh eschews the term Traveller Artist and says that her work reflects her experience as a Traveller woman. “Our kinship is our resilience and this is what the images are inspired by.”

Finally runner Mary Nolan Hickey is one of just 13 people who have run every Dublin marathon since the first back in 1980. She even ran the course when she was six and half months pregnant. Before her husband Tony passed away from cancer, she even pushed him in a wheelchair around the course. But even the inimitable Mary couldn’t beat Covid. The Dublin marathon was cancelled last year because of the virus. Mary was sanguine. "I’m telling people just to keep on running, to enjoy it…You have to look at the big picture and it’s only running in the big scheme things.”

We’ve all had to learn to be a little bit more patient, a little bit tougher and a lot less demanding this past year. Thank you to all the amazing Irish women who helped us along the way.