For both Anne and myself, joining organisations in which we were interested, and noting lectures or summer-schools focussing on attractive topics, provided key elements in our getting re-established in Ireland and involved in what was happening around us. Some of these organisations were private clubs or associations, others were built on the local and intellectual energies of communities or individuals, and, in the changed, more prosperous and open Ireland, many local authorities had invested in culture and tourism, opening theatres and appointing professional staffs to organise programmes, exhibitions and festivals.

Without being too strict as to chronology, this seems a good date under which to record some of the happy experiences and involvements of our return years.

In places I have preserved the present tense, as per the original form of these chapters.

…

In the Blackrock housing estate where we live we have excellent neighbours. Anne joined the Residents’ Association Committee and met a great collection of young mothers who are putting their professional skills into a newsletter and the organisation necessary to keep the estate a friendly place to live in, with a safe and well-cared-for environment. She was instrumental in the launching of a local book club on the lines of the club run by the British and Commonwealth Women’s Club in Brussels, which she had enjoyed greatly.

Also locally, we joined the Blackrock Society, a model of what an active literary and historical society offering cultural activities for its members should be. It organises short holiday trips abroad each spring and at the end of each year publishes a volume of Proceedings, which puts on record accounts of its activities, particularly the frequent talks, which continue to attract prestige speakers on an incredibly wide range of subjects. Anne and I try to be as active members as we can and have enjoyed trips with the Society to Madrid, Cracow, and Lisbon. I wrote the Proceedings’ account of the visit some members made to Auschwitz on the Cracow trip.

The Society proved most generous with its organisation and back-up in jointly hosting the launch of my second collection of poems in 2007. We have made new friends among the membership. Old friends, who are long-standing members of the Society, include Joe Carroll, my predecessor in the European Commission’s Spokesman’s Service, and Hugh and Anne Brady, who we met first on the Dun Laoghaire political scene. Hugh and Anne are both architects and have been active artistically in retirement.

One of my favourite excursions, on the unfortunately rare occasions when weather and opportunity coincide, is to drive with Hugh into the Wicklow countryside for a day’s plein-air drawing and painting. Hugh is a competent watercolourist. I do what I can, experimenting on each outing with different mediums, all the time in search of a distinctive style.

I have been a member of the well-known Kildare Street and University Club on St. Stephen’s Green for many years, for most of the time, of course, as an overseas member. Since returning home I have got actively involved in some of the Club’s cultural and social activities, running Classic Film Evenings for some years and, more recently, acting as a programme coordinator for a couple of members’ trips to Spain and Portugal. In this latter role I have worked with MAP Travel, a Dublin agency specialising in group travel, which Anne and I met first when travelling with the Friends of the Chester Beatty Library and with the Blackrock Society. I was also instrumental in the launching of a book club within the Club, a great source of interest and fun for both Anne and myself once a month.

As joiners, we are now also Friends of the National Library, the National Gallery, and the Royal Hibernian Academy. These often offer interesting programmes, as do the Irish Film Institute, the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire and the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, to all of which we subscribe. We hold reader tickets for our local libraries, Dublin City Library, the National Archive and the new Science Gallery in Trinity College. There are not enough hours in the day to hit even a tiny proportion of what is on offer. Our next joint target has to be more work on the Keery/Moran family tree.

Poetry does not offer much in terms of membership organisations, but I am a member of Haiku Ireland and have made friends there, particularly Maeve O’Sullivan, an energetic college lecturer, writer, poet and organiser. Maeve agreed to be the speaker at the launch of my second collection of poems in 2007, which I will mention later. I have read with Haiku Ireland and organised a couple of ginko, or reflective walks, for them. Public readings organised by Poetry Ireland and the annual Dun Laoghaire Poetry Festival provide great opportunities to meet writers and I greatly enjoyed being chosen as a Poetry Ireland “new voice” and getting a masterclass place at one of the Poetry Festivals.

Poetry is the focus for a number of the Summer Schools that launch their annual programmes at Irish audiences avid for talk and debate. Shortly after my return, I went to the annual John Hewitt summer school and became a close friend of the elderly poet, Robert Greacen, who I met there. Anne and I have also been to memorable Summer School sessions organised by the Byrne/Perry School in Gorey, Co. Wexford, and the Parnell Society at Avondale, Co. Wicklow. Linked respectively to the 1798 rebellion in Wexford and the great Irish Parliamentary Party Leader, they often offer good topical political debate. We try to choose sessions where there is a currently-controversial issue of interest to us with platform speakers who we would otherwise only know through their journalism or from radio and television.

A natural membership organisation for me on returning to Dublin was the Irish Section of the International Association of Former European Officials (AIACE). This is a small but growing organisation as more Irish officials reach retirement age. I found that, as with similar organisations (such as the Irish Parliamentary Society for former members of the Dáil and Senate), the primary focus is understandably on rights and entitlements relating to terms of employment, health insurance and so on. Given that Ireland is in an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the European Union, it struck me that AIACE could, without taking a political position, signal its interest in the general state of things and remind a wider public that its members could bring to information issues the intellectual capital of their knowledge and experience. An obvious way for AIACE to do this would be by seeking a place on the special observer pillar of the National Forum on Europe.

The Forum is representative of all the political parties and independents represented in the Oireachtas, with an observer pillar to offer civil society an opportunity to participate in its activities. Long-standing members of the pillar are the social partners, the churches, and a wide range of lobby and special interest groups, including political parties from Northern Ireland.

After careful consideration, when AIACE’s Irish Section decided it could seek to join the Forum, I was the member asked to take on the representative duties. This created, or renewed, a wide range of acquaintances in Ireland’s leadership framework. I had been an admirer of Maurice Hayes, the President of the Forum, for many years – meeting him first in Belfast when I was a young Senator and he was involved in the Citizens Advice organisation in the North. The first two Directors’ General of the Forum were first-class civil servants I had also met in different contexts over the years. Attending the Forum plenary sessions and lunches in Dublin Castle was a most enjoyable way to spend a day, picking up in the process a great deal of up-to-the-minute information about the EU and its institutions.

I stood down from my representative role following the debacle of the negative referendum vote on the Treaty of Lisbon. I had come to believe that the reality of the Forum exercise was that it did more for the negative voices it was obliged to give a platform to than it did for the more complex arguments of Treaty proponents.

From our return, Anne and I have both given some service to Dublin Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and to the Monkstown Preparative Meeting where we worship. Poems have emerged from some of this Quaker engagement, particularly the writing of a long poem – and some related shorter poems – inspired by a certain vision of peace. I called these collected texts “Temple Hill”, after the Friends Burial Ground near us in Blackrock. The urge to write was inspired by the arrival through our letter box of a heavily sellotaped envelope containing a set of burial ground keys I had requested.

When, at the end of 2003, one of the Temple Hill poems won the Francis Ledwidge Award, I felt quite touched when Michael O’Flanagan introduced me to some of his Inchicore friends as “the poet laureate of Irish Quakers”.

Read more: 2004 – Film Fantasy