Straight from the Hip - Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh

With a full house of four grown children plus husband, Bláthnaid Ní Chofaig is loving being able to travel the country, meeting the public for RTÉ’s Nationwide programme. But like many an Irish woman, she worries about the impact of the pandemic on younger people and, at times, she too struggles, as she tells Carissa Casey.

Bláthnaid Ní Chofaig is as upbeat and straight talking as she ever was, lockdown or no lockdown. It helps that, as a presenter of RTÉ’s Nationwide, she’s still able to get out and about.

“Judging by the response I get, it’s as good for me as it is for other people. Even when I go through a Garda checkpoint, they’re all chat, asking me what I’m up to and that.”

It’s the kind of interaction Bláthnaid clearly loves. “I’m a divil. I get great craic out of it. There’s always some mad story.”

Back home it’s a packed house. Her daughter Síle (24) was living in New York when the pandemic hit. She moved home and is now working from her old bedroom. Her oldest boy (23) is studying in his bedroom, while her two youngest sons (17 and 18) are sharing a room, the younger studying for the Leaving Cert, the older completing his first year of college. Then there’s her husband Ciarán, a musician, who works in a room downstairs.

“It’s cruel,” she readily admits. “Ciarán’s always worked at home so I think it’s harder on him because they’re all in his domain now.”

Bláthnaid Ní Chofaig

She tried her hand at home working and found it difficult. Like many of us, she found herself constantly distracted. “I’d be going out to the washing machine, hanging clothes out, filling and emptying the dishwasher, that kind of thing. Then I was answering emails at nine in the evening. I don’t mind doing that if it’s urgent. But it was starting to get in on me. I can’t be saying to my kids, leave your phones in the kitchen, don’t be bringing them into the living room, if I’m constantly glued to my phone,” she says.

(Bláthnaid is clearly no slave to modern technology. She tells me she’s recently discovered that a younger sister watches TV while scrolling through her phone. She’s clearly shocked at the idea, and even more shocked when I admit I do the same.)

With a full house of four grown children plus husband, Bláthnaid Ní Chofaig is loving being able to travel the country, meeting the public for RTÉ’s Nationwide programme. But like many an Irish woman, she worries about the impact of the pandemic on younger people and, at times, she too struggles, as she tells Carissa Casey.

Bláthnaid Ní Chofaig is as upbeat and straight talking as she ever was, lockdown or no lockdown. It helps that, as a presenter of RTÉ’s Nationwide, she’s still able to get out and about.

“Judging by the response I get, it’s as good for me as it is for other people. Even when I go through a Garda checkpoint, they’re all chat, asking me what I’m up to and that.”

It’s the kind of interaction Bláthnaid clearly loves. “I’m a divil. I get great craic out of it. There’s always some mad story.”

Back home it’s a packed house. Her daughter Síle (24) was living in New York when the pandemic hit. She moved home and is now working from her old bedroom. Her oldest boy (23) is studying in his bedroom, while her two youngest sons (17 and 18) are sharing a room, the younger studying for the Leaving Cert, the older completing his first year of college. Then there’s her husband Ciarán, a musician, who works in a room downstairs.

“It’s cruel,” she readily admits. “Ciarán’s always worked at home so I think it’s harder on him because they’re all in his domain now.”

She tried her hand at home working and found it difficult. Like many of us, she found herself constantly distracted. “I’d be going out to the washing machine, hanging clothes out, filling and emptying the dishwasher, that kind of thing. Then I was answering emails at nine in the evening. I don’t mind doing that if it’s urgent. But it was starting to get in on me. I can’t be saying to my kids, leave your phones in the kitchen, don’t be bringing them into the living room, if I’m constantly glued to my phone,” she says.

(Bláthnaid is clearly no slave to modern technology. She tells me she’s recently discovered that a younger sister watches TV while scrolling through her phone. She’s clearly shocked at the idea, and even more shocked when I admit I do the same.)

While she is weathering the lockdown relatively well, she is concerned about its impact on a younger generation. Her daughter, who is not yet working a year, marks weekends by the fact that she can leave her bedroom. “She should be out with her friends, shopping and having lunch and coffee,” says Bláthnaid.

But her biggest concern is the ongoing uncertainty over the Leaving Cert and how it’s affecting her youngest son and his friends. She went through it the previous year when another son was due to sit the Leaving Cert. “They’re so reactive. The phone is on all the time. My 17 year old knows more about Norma Foley (Minister for Education) than I do. He’ll be telling what she’s saying, what the union’s saying. They’re so clued in and they’re discussing it all the time. These are a bunch of lads who I always thought were only into burgers and sneaking a drink and shifting girls. They’re talking about things that in other generations they wouldn’t have a clue about.”

“It’s hard for the younger people but then it’s hard for everyone. As women we’re always thinking how hard it is for everyone else but it’s hard for us too. I hate wallowing in misery because life is miserable enough. I may want to give out sometimes because they’re all at home but then I think, they don’t want to be at home. It’s not their fault.”

That said, she clearly prizes her daughter’s company at the moment. They’ve set a challenge for themselves for the month of February. They both have to read six pages a day, do 10,000 steps, not snack between meals and drink three litres of water a day. “So far so good,” she says. “It’s a battle with that much water. I have to stop drinking at ten at night. But I find I’m eating less the more water I drink. I definitely feel a bit better in myself, especially around three or four in the afternoon when I sometimes have an energy dip.”

They’ve also found all sorts of ways to entertain themselves. One night recently her daughter made them both Cosmopolitan cocktails and they sat in the kitchen giving each other  foot treatments. It’s the kind of thing none of her sons would be remotely interested in, she points out.

A major excitement in recent days in the household was the arrival (finally) of a record player that Bláthnaid had bought her husband for Christmas. “Last night we played Squeeze, Sade, Revellino, David Bowie and the Beatles in the kitchen. I ironed and he played the music,” she says. “He was so happy. It was like I’d given him his first child.”

If this all seems like the very picture of domestic bliss, Bláthanid is keen to keep it real.

“Sure we find ways of amusing ourselves but then there are moments when there are a lot of slamming doors and nobody wants to talk. You have to let that happen and it’s not that easy. They’re allowed to slam the door. They’re still teenagers, they’re missing their friends, their lives, the GAA,” she says.

For her sons in particular, the lack of training is especially hard. “I think they really miss that sense of camaraderie. It’s massive, much bigger than I realised,” she says.

And while she readily admits she has a lot of pluses on her side, she does get fed up. “I have siblings and there’s a lot going on in their lives. I miss them. I want to put my arms around my mother. I definitely miss her. I speak to her every morning when she’s usually making her porridge.”

“I try to be upbeat, but I get low. I do suffer from anxiety. I’m trying to get to grips with that. I’m on a road of learning to help myself with it. I do my yoga and I’m learning meditation,” she says.

“I’m not in any way perfect but I do try and see the fun side of things. That’s what’s great about being older. Every time you get fed up, you remember you’ve experienced it before you know it won’t be forever. I’m glad I’m older. It’s why I’d worry about teenagers, they don’t realise that when you’re down, it will change.”

A few years ago, Bláthnaid made the bold step of going back to college to complete a Masters in Women’s Studies at UCD.  “It was brilliant, tough and exhausting. It was all the most intense emotions you can have. But I am so thrilled I could something like that academically. I didn’t have a primary degree and I don’t know if I had a chip on my shoulder about that or the world had a chip on its shoulder but it was something I’m so proud of having done.”

The experience opened doors in her mind, she says, and gave her ways of articulating her own beliefs about justice. “I knew as a woman that things were wrong. The way men talked to women, the way women take compliments from men based on our sexuality. The experience gave a license to these feelings – not that you need a license but it helps,” she says.

She emerged a better journalist and acutely aware of how important it is to help build an inclusive society. “For example one of the things that always annoyed me was how I was described as Bláthnaid, mother of four. I never knew why I didn’t like it. I’ve no problem talking about my kids, I’m very proud of them. But there’s a whole lot more to me.”

When hosting an event, she hasn’t used the phrase ‘ladies and gentlemen’ in five years. “I say ‘you’re all very welcome’. It means everyone is included,” she says.

She’s a year now into her tenure at Nationwide and, because of her travels around the country, a good insight into the public mood. “I think we have a little pep our step, these days,” she says. “The days are getting longer. There’s that little bit of extra brightness in the evening and I think that definitely affects Irish people. We’re far more affected by light levels in this country than we realise. Overall, I’d say our mojo’s coming back.”

For her, the biggest thrill at the moment is the forthcoming birth of twin calves by a cow cared for by her 12 year old nephew. “He’s got this Moocall app attached to the tail of the cow so he’ll be able to tell when it’s going into labour. So we’re all texting every morning, asking if there’s any news. It’s like one of us is having twins. I’m not lying to you, it’s out big excitement at the moment.”

“I think it’s lovely that connection between rural and urban. We’re all in different parts of Ireland but we all still have that pull to the rural life.”