I qualified for recruitment to the European Commission in either the education or information Directorates-General, DG XII or DG X. I was duly appointed in November 1973 to be Deputy Head of the Commission’s Press and Information Office in Dublin, a DG X post.

Because of my background of political involvement, I took up this new post determined that nothing in my new professional role could be construed as politically partisan. While I did not imagine then that I would continue in Commission employment up to retirement, I am happy in retrospect that I carried my commitment to professional political correctness right through my Commission career.

At times this seemed a ridiculous burden, at other times it protected me from involvements for which I no longer had much taste, on occasions it enabled me to be admitted into areas of confidence from which I might otherwise have been excluded. And it was a self-denying ordinance. Commission officials are not expected to be non-political as Irish and British civil servants are. The more I began to visit Brussels the more I saw that most of my colleagues from the founding Member States were identified with one of the three great families of European politics: Christian Democrat, Socialist or Liberal.

Central to my concern from 1974 to 1993, when Patricia graduated from University, would be the education and shaping of the two children. Both had become real people in their own right. Justin was six and Patricia was three. The renovated Monkstown house gave them each a bedroom on the top floor, similar narrow rooms looking out on the back garden with, for safety, windows with locks and reinforced glass.

Each of the bedrooms had a fitted wardrobe and was plumbed to take a wash-hand basin although, again for safety reasons, Anne and I had decided the installation of the basins would have to wait until the children were a bit older.

Our double bedroom, with wardrobes and a Vanitory unit, looked out on the front, as did our fourth bedroom, then allocated to the au pair, but potentially an excellent double room for visitors. The house’s main bathroom, unfortunately much smaller than we would have liked, was up a few steps from the top landing.

Rooms quickly acquire the characteristics of their occupants. Our room was dominated by bookshelves and bedside units made for us by the carpenter who had worked on the house conversion. Justin’s room was rarely tidy. It was usually strewn with bits and pieces of material he had salvaged with a view to making some electrical gadget or other – on his acceptance visit to kindergarten school a year earlier he had asked the headmistress whether the school had two-pin or three-pin plugs.

Patricia’s room was feminine and cosy, with the bed always nicely made up. Often, she could hardly wait to get into bed and loved her sleep. Sleep always seemed to be the last thing on Justin’s mind.

Just as Anne and I and the children had begun to settle into our new home, with Florence happily installed in her granny-flat at ground floor level, all the pieces we had so carefully put together had to be thought about again – completely unexpectedly. In the spring of 1974 Dr. Hillery telephoned to ask me if I would come out to Brussels to work for him as Deputy Chef de Cabinet.

Ever since my first information visit to Brussels I had been somewhat in awe of the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, with the express lift bringing you to the 13th floor where all the Commissioners had their offices. The offices on that floor were the only ones in the building to have sliding windows opening out on to balconies with spectacular views over the city.

Each Commissioner’s suite was furnished to his personal taste – there were no women Commissioners then – and on my first visit I had been very impressed by the carpet, flowers and furnishing of President Malfatti’s office. Between the office areas immediately inside the plate-glass sides of each wing of the building were spacious areas with large modern settees, armchairs and coffee tables where visitors would wait to be received by Commissioners or senior Cabinet staff. The Commission’s meeting room, dominated by a huge circular table and flanked by interpretation booths, was the powerhouse of the building.

It housed the Commissioners’ regular Wednesday meetings and, at other times, particularly on Monday afternoons, the meeting of Chefs de Cabinet to prepare the Commission’s Wednesday meeting. “Chefs” was the domain of the famous Secretary General, Emile Noël, whose concern was always to see that the lines of decision-making required by each Wednesday agenda would be clear, no matter how much preparative time and effort might be required in the weekly or special Chefs de Cabinet meetings.

Through my official missions from the Dublin Office to DG X in Brussels, where I had often stayed with John McColgan, the Deputy Chef de Cabinet I was asked to succeed, I had a good idea of the challenge before me. I wondered if I would be up to a job on the 13th floor – most of the officials there seemed to have a rather different background and drive to mine. Given my difficulties with French, I wondered if I could ever get it up to the standard of fluency I believed to be important. Having heard so many horror stories of the family life of diplomats I wondered if the family would be able to make the move successfully. Of course everyone said the invitation was a wonderful career opportunity but it was to take several more years before I saw myself as a Commission official for life and qualified to be appointed to a post at the highest level.

The factors which led Anne and me to agree to move to Brussels in 1974 were assurances that at the end of the Commission’s four-year term in 1976 I would have a right to return to my Dublin Office post, should I so choose, and Dr. Hillery’s view that, on the basis of our work together on the accession referendum, I would have little difficulty in doing what would be required of me on the 13th floor.

Once the decision to accept the Cabinet post on secondment was taken, matters moved impressively quickly and smoothly. Like a number of the first wave of Irish people taking up Commission posts, I took up temporary residence in a service flat on Rue Archimède, just behind the Berlaymont. Anne and I had decided to move the family in September for the start of the school year. Justin could go to the European school and Patricia could go to a Belgian maternelle.

Schools, and my awareness of the geography of the commune in which the Mc Colgans lived, sent me house-hunting in the same Woluwe area of the city. September is a turnaround time in most capitals and I looked at the house rented by Fergus Pyle, the Irish Times correspondent in Brussels, who was returning to Dublin. Anne came over to have a look at it and it was agreed we would take over the lease.

Florence was of course disappointed that the ideal Monkstown arrangement should be disrupted so soon and unexpectedly, but she stoically accepted, as she had accepted so much in her life, that her duty was to my career prospects. The trauma of the break was eased somewhat by the coincidence that one of her closest friends, Elsie Clampett, was looking for accommodation and would be happy to move into the Monkstown house temporarily. Part of the attraction of the Brussels house on Avenue Van Goolen was that it had space for guests, so Florence was also assured that she would be welcome for long visits. Naturally she had become a very close granny for Justin and Patricia. Justin particularly loved the card-games she would play with him. Patricia shared her enthusiasm for music and singing.

That the great move worked was of course primarily due to Anne. Her French and Spanish and student and au pair experience in France and Spain had helped to equip her for the move to Brussels. The fact that she was a full-time mother, and would decide to remain so, also meant she was available to nurse the children through the trauma of their first experience of new schools in a foreign environment.

Justin settled easily into the European School where the class teacher for the English language pupils, Miss Rice, knew exactly how to handle him and he liked and respected her and was anxious to please. Patricia had a much more difficult time in the totally strange environment of the commune’s French-speaking Belgian maternelle. This was an excellent school where all the pupils had pinafores and were taught to be tidy and to brush their teeth, hanging their coats on low hooks and washing at lines of low basins. But Patricia apparently never said a word in school and went through the school hours with a look of perplexity on her face as the French language buzzed around her.

At the maternelle there was another pupil having a similarly tough time. This was David Jonietz, an open-faced American who was prepared to talk with Patricia. Anne quickly got to know his mother, Patricia, as they waited together for their children in the early afternoon.

So began a contact and a friendship that would link the Keery and Jonietz families in the years ahead.

Read more: 1975 – The Family in Brussels