The most successful part of the family’s return to Dublin was acceptance of Justin and Patricia in my old school St. Andrew’s College, now in Booterstown, not far from Monkstown, and housed in a significant building designed by Paul Koralek, architect of the notable, modern extension to Trinity College’s historic library.

Both settled in quickly and thrived on the traditional-style teaching of English, mathematics and so on. Getting them to and from school became a shared car run with another family living nearby in a large terraced house similar to our own. Joan and Frank Barry alternated as drivers with Anne and myself. Patricia enjoyed the company of Guy Barry, a serious boy with an interest in astronomy, and Justin grew very fond of Jane, the adopted daughter of a sister of Joan’s.

Even now the whole family is touched from time to time by a sense of friendship with the Barry’s. Frank was a published poet in the cultural renaissance of post-war Dublin; Joan, the actress Joan O’Hara, became one of Irish theatre’s leading women; and their older son, Sebastian, is now an established writer, with some of his plays among the finest Irish drama of the late twentieth century.

For Anne and me, probably the closest friendship renewed by the St. Andrew’s connection was that with Michael and Melissa Webb, two of whose daughters were then also in class with Justin and Patricia. Michael is a leading quantity surveyor whose clients have included Trinity College and Paul Koralek. Melissa is a daughter of W.B. Stanford, one of Trinity’s best known professors of Greek, who was also elected by Trinity College graduates to the Irish Senate. Both make a tremendous and largely untrumpeted contribution to civic life in Ireland and to Dublin’s Protestant community in particular.

Once family and furniture were delivered, my own return to Ireland took place in easy stages as I stayed on in Brussels for a couple of months to facilitate the handover to the new Commissioner and Cabinet. The new Chef de Cabinet, John Hogan, an Irish civil servant based at the embassy in London, decided to take over the Keery’s Avenue Van Goolen base. For a few weeks he and I operated out of the largely empty house as if from limbo.

Following his appointment, the new member of the Commission from Ireland, Richard Burke, Minister for Education in the Fine Gael-led government, chose a completely new Cabinet. This was a mistake on his part but the nature of the Irish political scene at that time – and probably most of the time – was that that was the way to do things.

Edwin Fitzgibbon, the outgoing Chef de Cabinet, seemed anxious to encourage an atmosphere implying that to consider a post in the Burke team would be seen as an act of disloyalty to Dr. Hillery. I tried conscientiously to help the new Cabinet in any way I could.

I was often shocked by their questions and distrust. For some months following my return to the Commission’s Dublin Office odd inquiries from Brussels would surprise me at my desk in the Merrion Square building to which the Office had moved after its first years in Fitzwilliam Square. Given my role as the Office press spokesman, it was awkward at first working with the Cabinet Spokesman, Liam Hourican, who had been the coalition government’s Press Secretary. I would come to admire his talents, enjoy his friendship, and, I hope, his confidence. His sudden death in 1993 was a very great loss.

Although Fianna Fáil has been Ireland’s most successful political party in the 20th century, its conservatism and its anti-intellectualism have meant that it has never enjoyed much media sympathy. Whenever the Party was out of office, particularly in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, newspaper readers could be forgiven for thinking that the Party had ceased to exist and that the defining tone of right-thinking at home and abroad was whatever Garret FitzGerald or Mary Robinson said it should be.

Such an environment was undoubtedly an important factor in the shared feeling of being outsiders which hit Anne and myself immediately we were re-established at home. It contributed to the precautions I took to ensure that the degree of contact I had kept within the Party, particularly with Dr. Martin O’Donoghue, an advisor to Jack Lynch, went unremarked. For some time it had been evident that there would be a general election in Ireland in 1977. Martin and I had discussed possible Fianna Fáil platform ideas when he had visited Brussels towards the end of the Hillery Commission mandate. The theme emerging from our discussions then was of a programme for “national reconstruction”.

From this distance it may seem incredible that the state of the Irish economy merited such a dramatic expression. It was not until March or April that I became involved in what I still think of as the most remarkable political weeks of my life. Up till then, the return home had been a matter of keeping my head down at the Office and re-establishing a comfortable social pattern outside office hours. The fact that Anne and I had decided to become Quakers, that is members of the Religious Society of Friends, just before leaving Brussels, meant that we returned into the Society’s Dublin Monthly Meeting of Ireland Yearly Meeting.

Quaker membership goes through acceptance by a monthly meeting. Our decision to join in Brussels was in part to express solidarity with and confidence in a small Meeting in which we had been attenders since 1974 and in which we had played an active role, including the running of a Sunday School in which Justin and Patricia had enjoyed contact with the children of other Members and attenders. Membership carries entitlement of transfer to another Meeting and of course we were welcomed in Dublin Monthly Meeting because we had been known before going to Brussels as attenders at Monkstown preparative Meeting.

We liked and respected many of the Dublin Quakers, including Stella Webb, a well-known solicitor and United Nations Association activist, who visited us at home to mark our transfer. Involvement in the life of the Monkstown, Dublin, and Leinster Quarterly Meetings, and Ireland Yearly Meeting quickly taught us a great deal about Quaker traditions and made us familiar with the great diversity of expression within that tradition among Friends in the Dublin Meetings of Eustace Street, Churchtown and Rathfarnham, and further afield in Waterford, Belfast and Lisburn. Pacifism, consensus, and the integrity of the individual lie at the heart of Quaker organisation and belief. I have never found any reason to question the rightness of these core convictions but, even among Quakers, they can seem unrealistic.

You can easily fill a life with family and parental priorities, work, participation in a Quaker Meeting, a cultural and social programme, and annual holidays. Such a routine round can even be exhausting, but, since university, I have never felt at ease unless I am involved in some venture drawing on my urge to creativity. I see this urge as a search to express ideas or feelings in a way that seems distinctively mine and fulfils the constant wish to alter the world around me or to do something that may be accepted by others as having some artistic merit.

The opportunity for probably my most satisfying burst of creativity came in the form of a phone call from Esmond Smyth, Head of the Opposition’s Think Tank, the Fianna Fáil post that might have been mine had I not chosen to join the European Commission. He asked me to call over to see him in Leinster House when I had finished work. It was a strange experience returning to Leinster House where, like all former members of the Oireachtas I have a right of entry, but which because I so rarely exercised it, became more and more problematic as fewer and fewer ushers knew me. After strong withdrawal symptoms as I went up to the Party rooms in the new wing and walked down the familiar corridor to the Party leader’s office, Esmond, – whose office was across the corridor from Jack Lynch’s – immediately drew me into an amazing political enterprise.

What Esmond told me in total confidence was that Jack Lynch was now certain the government would call a General Election in mid-June and that Fianna Fáil must have a manifesto ready by mid-May, would I join the working group which would finalise the manifesto provisions on the basis of contributions from the back-up groups supporting the shadow Ministers? In particular, would I be prepared to report to him on the drafting of the manifesto document? I’m sure both he and Jack Lynch knew this was an offer I could not refuse. Since my Fianna Fáil National executive days I had been a lone voice arguing the merits of a Party manifesto, a rare phenomenon in the Irish politics of that time, particularly since the Labour Party’s disaster with its New Republic manifesto proclaiming that the ‘70s would be Socialist.

Esmond took a sheaf of photocopied pages from a locked filing cabinet telling me that this was what the back-up groups had produced so far and to take them home and look at them and tell him what I thought. He added, by the way, that Jack Lynch had heard I was coming in and would like a word with me.

In the much more substantial leader’s office across the corridor, Mr Lynch said he was glad to see me again and confirmed that he was sure of the election date and that time would be of the essence in preparing the manifesto. He wanted to be in a position to publish it the day after the election was called. And, more immediately – “by the way” – could I ever write him a script for the following evening attacking the arrogance of the government? He said there was a feeling the Opposition had been letting the government away with murder and it was time to step up visibility in parallel with the work on the manifesto. Part of the effort of nights and weekends in the coming weeks would be trying to ensure that Jack did not simply take emerging manifesto chapters and ideas and launch them as speeches before the manifesto was ready. My first summary of the emerging document was lost that way, delivered one weekend to a Cork audience.

The Lynch intuition was right and the manifesto was published as planned. It was undoubtedly a key factor in Fianna Fáil’s overwhelming election victory. The government was so taken by surprise that it never really got its own campaign going.

While roundly criticised by many journalists at the time and by historians since, the initial press reaction to the “Action Plan for National Reconstruction” was that it marked a new departure in Irish politics. In my view, much of the historic criticism of the manifesto is largely mistaken because it shows little understanding of the contemporary context, dealt with to some extent in the material lodged in my Boole boxes. Suffice it to say, there is a tremendous kick to be had in seeing your work at the centre of a political campaign, and for the four weeks of the campaign from 26 May to 16 June that pleasure was mine.

Read more: 1978 – Hospitalisations and Travel