1973 became another watershed year. Looking back, I can identify the symbolic gesture that marked what would become a lifelong commitment to a pattern of living and decision-making in which my fundamental convictions and choices would never be totally subject to the discipline of a political party, employer, or any other institutional arrangement into which I entered.

I would face the consequences, rough and smooth of that commitment. My decision that summer to regrow the beard of my student days was the symbol of that commitment, asserting the non-conformist, dissenter, side of my personality.

While an undergraduate, I had shaved off my beard as soon as I began to seek employment. The growth, which became identifiable as a beard on that summer holiday in Portnoo with Anne, Justin, Patricia, Florence and Martine, the French au pair we had taken on as Patricia’s minder, has been part of me ever since and I could not imagine ever removing it now.

In Portnoo we stayed at the local hotel owned and run by the daughters of Joe Brennan, a long-standing Fianna Fáil TD and, until the election, Minister for Labour. The hotel was just up the road from the Paulin’s bungalow and not far from the house rented by Mary Paulin’s niece, Barbara Maxwell, who worked in London with the BBC and who, with her lawyer husband, Brian Ash, and then young family, were also becoming close friends.

Garret Fitzgerald, who had become Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the Fine Gael-led coalition which had taken office following the General Election of 28 February was also holidaying locally with his wife Joan and turned up at the beach one day for a swim.

The extraordinary and completely unexpected highlight of the holiday was the dinner some evenings later at Paulin’s which brought together their clan, the Keerys and the Fitzgeralds.

I was of course sorely disappointed that I had again failed to get elected to the Dáil in the February election. I was sorry, but not too surprised, that Fianna Fáil failed to win a majority for the first time in sixteen years and had gone out of office. Apparently, I had done well enough in the election and still had sufficient support in the Party that I was encouraged to contest the Senate Election which always followed the election of a new Dáil. I knew nothing at all about Senate elections, and had not a lot of energy or enthusiasm left for the undertaking, but was prepared to at least keep faith with the Party machine which gave me a nomination to run. Suffice it to say here, and it is enough to give an indication of how odd the electoral process of Irish Senate elections is, that I failed to get elected by less than half a vote.

The key Senate electors for a party candidate are the party’s members of the newly elected Dáil, the outgoing Senate, and of the County Councils. Candidates tour the country in search of these elusive highly experienced and professional voters. If part of my General Election problem was the difficulty I often found in communicating with individual voters, I quickly saw my itinerary on the Senate trail as a succession of disappointing encounters. I found it very difficult to talk to the County Councillors I met and could not imagine that anything I might say would persuade them to vote for me. I felt my Dublin accent and Protestant background as alien in the farmhouses, stone-flagged cottages, and small shops in which I had to plead my case.

An even greater disappointment was to find former Senate colleagues and Ministers, who I knew had some regard for me and were very much aware of the work I had done, telling me quite candidly that they were sorry they could not vote for me because they had already committed themselves to a colleague forward-looking enough to have sought their support months before the election was even called.

This blind loyalty to the first person who asks you directly for your No 1 vote was a feature of the Fianna Fáil approach to politics with which I was never able to come to terms. I assumed it was something rooted in the behaviour of rural Ireland.

With the Senate election out of the way, the question of what I could do next became rather urgent and important for Anne and myself. The Secretary of Trinity College had indicated that, should I so choose, I would be welcome to resume my administrative post. As the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party in opposition began to organise itself, Jack Lynch spoke to me about the idea of heading a support group on a contract basis. Part of the modernisation of Irish politics and the impact of the country’s accession to the European Communities on 1 January was a growing realisation that to be effective politicians needed to be able to call on professional “Think Tank” resources. Community accession also meant that there were possibilities of recruitment to posts in the European Parliament and the European Commission.

My first decision was to try to avoid going back to TCD . While it was of course a secure and comfortable option, it seemed a rather dull and boring prospect, given my experience since taking leave of absence. The Think Tank option was tempting, although no one seemed much concerned to define the salary and contractual terms that might be available. I could have no reservations if it was clear I would be given an open and wide-ranging brief to help the shadow cabinet develop a new policy agenda.

I suspected, however, that the day-to-day reality might mean having to churn out speeches for front-bench leaders for whom I had little regard. Happily, before I was placed in a position where I would have to make up my mind, the third European option offered itself in clearly defined terms and I chose to accept it.

Whenever the European Community enlarges, recruitment opportunities are opened to nationals of the acceding Member States and fall outside the usual, notoriously difficult, examination procedures. Until the election process had influenced my fate, much as I was interested in Europe, and much as I had been impressed by my first information visit to the Commission in 1971, it had never entered my mind to seek a job in the European institutions. The idea of going to work in Brussels or Strasbourg, and the complication it would pose for Anne, the children, and Florence, then so happily installed in Monkstown, seemed too much to face.

Apart from my reservations about the TCD and Party options, what mobilised me to pursue the European option was the suggestion that if I succeeded in one of the ongoing competitions for recruitment at Principal Administrator level I could be recruited to a post in the newly established Press and Information Office of the European Commission in Dublin.

The position of Head of this Office, a higher level, Head of Division post, had already been filled by Denis Corboy, former Director of the Irish Council of the European Movement, who had been instrumental in bringing me onto the Executive Committee of the ICEM. Most of the Irish quota of senior posts at Head of Division, Director, and Director-General level in the European institutions had already been filled. Dr. Hillery had been appointed to be the Member of the European Commission from Ireland and in January had been made a Vice-President of the Commission with special responsibility for Social Affairs. He had already assembled his personal office or Cabinet in Brussels, drawing on civil servants from the Department of Foreign Affairs, a career Commission official – a Belgian who had worked with the previous Social Affairs commissioner, an agricultural economist, and the economic correspondent of RTE. Joe Carroll, the European Correspondent of the Irish Press, had been recruited as his Brussels Spokesman.

To get on stage myself I had to prepare for the recruitment competition, which would be by interview, on the basis of an application form, and with the possibility that I could be questioned in the second Community language I would choose to designate. French, of course, was my only second language possibility and in August I left Anne and the children for a language course at the University of Caen, in Normandy. I found the month difficult and lonely as I stuck firmly to the task of speaking in French, reading French newspapers, and even listening to the radio in French.

As references on my application form I had named Gerald Giltrap, the Secretary of Trinity College, and Jack Lynch, as, in effect, my most recent employers. I had named Jack Waugh, our family GP, as my personal referee. The biggest surprise in what turned out happily to be a successful interview held in London in September was that I was asked why I had not given Dr. Hillery as one of my referees. Since Dr. Hillery was a member of the Commission, the employer on whose behalf I would be interviewed, it never crossed my mind to cite him as a reference. After pointing this out to the board, I found myself going up front in a tone of self-righteousness I occasionally have difficulty in controlling: “I prefer to be selected on the basis of what I do rather than who I know,” I declared.

Read more: 1974 – Secondment to Brussels Cabinet