Mary Banotti

Grandniece of Michael Collins, an MEP for two decades and a lifelong activist on social issues who made a big impact on Irish life

Mary Banotti, who died on May 10 aged 84, was a grandniece of revolutionary leader Michael Collins, a member of the European Parliament for 20 years and a lifelong activist on social issues.

She was born Mary Elizabeth O’Mahony in Dublin on May 29, 1939. Initially living on Blackhorse Avenue, the O’Mahonys then moved to Clontarf. She was the eldest in a family of six and Mary’s mother Kitty (née Collins) had lived as a child in Woodfield, near Clonakilty, Co Cork, where Collins himself had grown up.

After the house was burnt down at the direction of the Essex Regiment as a counter-revolutionary gesture, the family moved to Dublin. Kitty was one of the last family members to see Collins alive before he was killed in an ambush at Béal na mBláth in August 1922. The congregation at her funeral derived great amusement from a story, told by Mary Banotti, of how Kitty’s famous uncle wanted to give her an affectionate peck on the cheek but the 10-year-old refused, saying: “I’m too old for that sort of kissing.”

Later, in 1937, Kitty met Jim O’Mahony and they got engaged within two weeks. He worked as a bank official and as a part-time actor under the name JG Winter at the Abbey Theatre and appeared in a number of films such as Captain Boycott, based on the Irish land war. He died in 1949 when Mary was only 10 and her mother went back to work as a teacher in the College of Catering on Dublin’s Cathal Brugha Street.

Growing up on the Stiles Road in Clontarf, Mary O’Mahony attended a local private primary school before moving on to the nearby Holy Faith Convent. She later attended secondary school as a boarder at the Dominican Convent in Wicklow.

She emigrated to London in the mid-1950s to train as a nurse and moved to New York four years later. She later said that her time in the US sparked off an interest in politics: “I had been there only a couple of months when Kennedy was assassinated and then there was the Civil Rights movement... and there were also the worldwide divisions caused by the Vietnam War.” Having pursued her nursing career in the US and Canada, she became an aid worker in Kenya, which also helped to broaden her political outlook.

She married an Italian doctor, Giovanni Banotti, and they left Kenya for Rome. The marriage broke up and in October 1970 Banotti returned to Ireland with her daughter Tania after a total of 15 years abroad.

“When I came back, I got a job and I had a baby to rear. About a year-anda-half later, I was so outraged about something that was happening politically that I went down and joined the Clontarf branch of Fine Gael,” she recalled.

An election took place shortly afterwards which was “great fun and absolutely fascinating. I was hooked from then on”. The comments were part of a series of interviews collected in a book There’s Something about Mary published by Currach Press in 2008 where all the other interviews were conducted by Banotti herself. All the interviewees were politicians whose first name was Mary, including Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil’s Mary O’Rourke.

In 1972, Banotti took up a position as an occupational health nurse and industrial welfare officer with Irish Distillers. She was also a co-founder of Women’s Aid which was set up to provide refuge and shelter for abused women and she also co-founded and chaired the Rutland Centre for Drug Abuse. Between 1980 and 1984, she presented a weekly television programme on RTÉ about social welfare rights.

In 1983, nominated by the Irish Wheelchair Association, she stood as a candidate for the Seanad on the Administrative Panel, but without success.

In the same year, she contested a Dáil by-election in the constituency of Dublin Central to fill a vacancy caused by the untimely death of former tánaiste and finance minister George Colley at the age of 57. It was strong Fianna Fáil territory at the time and their candidate Tom Leonard got 46.6pc of first preferences and held the seat for the party. Banotti came second on 22.5pc, with Michael White of the Workers’ Party third on 13.3pc and Christy Burke of Sinn Féin in fourth place on 7.1pc. The campaign took a lot out of her and she had to spend two weeks recovering in hospital afterwards.

Strasbourg turned out to be a more promising destination than Leinster House and, in the contest for the European Parliament in 1984, she won a seat in the Dublin Constituency. She recalled waking up at her home in Ringsend and thinking: “I was on my way and it was a lovely feeling.”

Her fluency in Italian was useful at the parliament but, when she spoke some Irish during her maiden speech, it confused a British MEP who was in the chair and told her to stop. The two of them later became friends and Banotti was also on good terms with the Reverend Ian Paisley after she found herself sitting beside the Northern Ireland MEP on a flight to Strasbourg. “We got chatting and he was very nice to me always,” she said.

Banotti held on to the European seat for the next 20 years until she retired in 2004. In the spring of 1997, she phoned then taoiseach and Fine Gael leader John Bruton to tell him she was interested in becoming the party’s candidate for the presidency later in the year. A number of backbench TDs later promoted Avril Doyle as a contender but Banotti finally won the nomination.

She said later that she wouldn’t have run if Mary Robinson had sought another term in office. There were four female candidates and one male contender in the end and Mary McAleese, nominated by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, got 574,000 votes on the first count compared to 372,000 for Banotti, ending up as the winner.

In 1999, Banotti was a goodwill ambassador for the UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities, now shortened to UN Population Fund) which supports programmes in more than 140 countries on reproductive and maternal health as well as increased access to birth control as well as campaigning against child marriage, gender-based violence and on other issues.

Mary Banotti passed away peacefully at St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, having previously been in the care of the staff at Fern Dean Nursing Home in Deansgrange.

She is survived by her daughter Tania, siblings Michael O’Mahony, former justice minister Nora Owen, Catherine O’Mahony and Joan O’Mahony. She was predeceased by her sister Una. Removal took place last Wednesday evening to the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Foxrock, and her funeral mass the next morning was followed by cremation at Mount Jerome, Harold’s Cross.

In a statement, President Michael D Higgins said: “Mary Banotti made a very significant contribution to Irish life, both in her 20 years of service to the people of Dublin as a Member of the European Parliament and through the many important causes which she played such an active role in supporting over the course of her life. I had the privilege of personally knowing Mary over a number of decades and had the deepest respect for her principled positions on these important issues.”