Fidelma Healy Eames: Could you say to your children, ‘We’re lucky to have adopted you, your birth mothers chose life, but I voted for abortion’

Fidelma Healy Eames was expelled from Fine Gael 10 years ago. Now, she says she stands by her decision, despite being ostracised by many

"I have a number of friends who don’t have the same views on everything, but I don’t walk away from them for that reason." Photo: Ray Ryan

Sarah Caden

Fidelma Healy Eames remembers her first day in the Seanad in 2007 well, and an encounter with a fellow female politician. “I walked in the gates of Leinster House,” she says, “and she said, on the very first day, ‘Are you ready for the next general election?’. I’d just arrived. But that’s the problem with politics, you’re never there. I’ve shifted now to my own way of looking at things. I’ve moved from achievement to fulfilment. I really believe that we have to say that all we have is now.”

I meet Healy Eames in a Dublin city-centre hotel, not far from Leinster House, but far enough that we’re not going to be interrupted by a procession of politicians. Ostensibly, we’re here to talk about her book, The Gifted Learner, which she was invited to write as part of an existing series of How to Help books, aimed at exploring issues faced by young people at home and in school. Healy Eames, a primary school teacher, has always had her heart in education, even through her time as a Fine Gael local councillor and then in the Seanad.