The invitation to join Dr. Hillery’s Cabinet had been accepted without any reflection as to how long this Brussels assignment might last or where it might lead. None of the Irish members of the Cabinet had any experience of the Commission and its structures.

My bottom line was that my term in the Cabinet would depend on my own performance and whether or not Dr. Hillery’s mandate would be renewed at the end of 1976. Already recruited as a permanent Commission official, on Cabinet secondment I had an absolute right to return to the Dublin Office post from which I was seconded.

I loved my Cabinet work and was very proud of my Berlaymont 13th floor office. In addition to my speech and policy work with Dr. Hillery, I was particularly interested in trying to win for the “Irish” Cabinet a reputation of involvement, good sense and performance among the other Cabinets. I also tried to improve, through the creation of administrative procedures, the often difficult relationship between the Cabinet and the Directorate-General for Social Affairs (DG V), our main correspondent.

My hectic work programme ran right through to the dramatic termination of the Hillery Commission mandate.

I realised in retrospect that until the arrival of Liam Cosgrave’s letter, a short note from the Taoiseach’s Office appearing to tell Dr. Hillery that he would not be reappointed, I had never given any serious thought to what I might do next. I now know that to have had any real chance of career promotion to an interesting post at Commission Headquarters I should have been signalling my interest in such a prospect from the moment I arrived in Brussels.

Of course I have to admit that returning to Dublin also appeared a sensible option for the family, particularly giving Justin and Patricia an opportunity to experience primary schooling at home. Our Monkstown house was much more comfortable than our Brussels base, Florence would be delighted to have us back upstairs, and we would again enjoy the contact with neighbours, friends and family, for which holiday or visit contacts were not really a satisfactory alternative. It also seemed a reasonable option for myself in that I was not absolutely sure I had got the possibility of a career in Irish politics out of my system. I was privileged that I had a right to return to my Dublin post – if things did not work out I would be able to reconsider my Commission position from there. I felt sure my Brussels experience would be useful to me back home.

Despite my shock and deep hurt at the obstacles people began to place in the way of my return to Dublin, and the lack of interest displayed in the family’s Brussels experience by even family and friends, I have to admit that one of the characteristics I shared with Anne, and which we seem to have communicated to our children, is a tendency to assume that everyone will see as positive and good things we ourselves see as positive and good. Such an open and innocent philosophy I still believe helps to make one a decent person and a good citizen, but it can seem to be a handicap in terms of career or professional advancement.

Why were we all, as a family, so modest about our achievements and so hesitant in seeking the potentially available rewards of promotion and a higher career potential? The only explanation can be that we see other aspects of life as more rewarding or are reluctant to take on the risk of larger responsibilities. I wish I felt able to declare categorically that the answer lies in the former explanation.

The tensions of 1976 were played out against a background of exceptionally fine weather. Realising that this might be our last summer on the continent, Anne and I decided we should try to visit France. Because of our limited experience of the large car and continental motoring, my reluctance to drive long distances, and the children’s restiveness at spending too long in the car, we ended up choosing to tour in Alsace and we set about studying the maps and booking hotels, looking for places likely to offer something for all the family. Florence was invited to come with us.

It turned out to be one of those holidays of which the best memory is a simple photograph of the family taken by Florence in woods near Ronchamps. We look happy and close and in touch with our surroundings, though we ourselves did not perceive it, we probably look non-Irish. The different clothes and style we acquired abroad would be part of our distinctiveness back in Ireland.

The reality of the holiday was that our itinerary and the hotels proved disappointing. In Verdun, for example, the openness and the flatness of the country put us off exploring the famous battleground. We were shocked to find that the main souvenirs on offer in the town seemed to be shells and bullets moulded in chocolate.

Ronchamps, the site of the famous and beautiful chapel by Le Corbusier, turned out to be an extraordinarily plain small town and the height on which the church was built was much less impressive than Dalkey’s Killiney Hill. And so it went on. We were disappointed with the break and anxious about the future. The best moments were when we found a good place to park, unload the picnic gear from the car, and work together to make a meal cooked on our gas rings. Eating out of doors always seems an event whether you are a performer or a spectator.

Within the European Commission, and in Ireland, 1976 was a year marked by a range of extraordinary events, also documented in my Boole Library papers.

For two of these, the Commission’s insistence on the application in Ireland of the Directive on Equal Pay for men and women, and the transition from the resignation of President O’Dalaigh to the election of Dr. Hillery to the State’s highest office, I had a sense of being both a performer and a spectator. Flicking through the volume of bound speeches which was part of the Cabinet’s gift to Dr. Hillery when he invited us to the President’s residence, Áras an Uachtaráin, after his inauguration, I was amazed at how little had ever been taken up by the press, even at what in news terms must surely have been significant occasions.

Particularly from the beginning of October onwards, when institutional tensions in Ireland were very obvious, and indeed, in his inauguration address on 3 December, Dr. Hillery repeatedly signalled, for the attention of anyone who might appreciate it, his total commitment to the rule of law and to the value of a constitutional framework focused on the importance of dignity, justice and mutual esteem between all men and women in a democratic society. I remember distinctively that I heard of only one person commenting on the pointed wisdom of what Dr. Hillery had to say, this was an elderly former Minister, present at the Presidential inauguration, who saw the new President’s short text as “pregnant with meaning”.

At the end of the year the family was ready for the big move home. We now had experience of the move from Dalkey to Monkstown and from Monkstown to Brussels. Moves are never easy, always tiring, and they impose great wear and tear on furniture and everything else. It was of little comfort when a move-weary diplomat told us that within the Irish foreign service three moves were regarded as the equivalent of a house fire. Whatever the wear and tear, that first Brussels experience was undoubtedly a great experience in which, for better or for worse, all family members had been significantly shaped. I felt satisfied that I had contributed to the first Irish experience of a Commission mandate.

I remember with particular affection the warmest praise I had received from Dr. Hillery when tackling one of the many small logistic problems so often encountered at European Parliament sessions and elsewhere: “You’re as handy as a small pot”, I was told.

Files and boxes of notes in my Boole collection give some idea of what was involved in the work of an Irish pioneer at the European Commission.

Read more: 1977 – Drawn into a General Election Mandate