Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan were history-makers due to their contribution to the campaign that led to the introduction of marriage equality in 2015. They’d been together as a couple since 1981, and later fought a legal case to have their same-sex marriage in Canada recognised in Ireland. They were left shattered, however, when the High Court in December 2006 rejected their arguments although, as one of their legal team said, they won in the court of public opinion.
By the time of the 2015 referendum, Gilligan was seriously ill, having suffered a stroke that left her blind. Her declining health marked Zappone’s time in national politics (as a Senator from 2011, and as TD and minister from 2016). “My independent, dynamic and imaginative Annie had been stilled,” Zappone writes in some of the most heart-breaking passages in Love in a Time of Politics. Gilligan – who Zappone describes as, “one of the greatest warriors I have ever known” – died in June 2017. The red and black sparkly gowns the couple wore for their Irish marriage are now part of the national museum’s collection.
Zappone’s memoir moves between the personal and the political, although too often the narrative is interrupted by repeated “thank yous” to colleagues and friends (and this in a book with seven pages of acknowledgments). The political is less reflective than Eoghan Murphy’s recent ministerial memoir of mostly the same period in office, nor does the book contain the keen insights of Gemma Hussey’s cabinet diaries from the 1980s.
Zappone was involved in talks that ultimately led to the formation of the Social Democrats. She withdrew before the discussions concluded as she did not believe a joint leadership of the new party would work. She was subsequently elected as an Independent TD at the 2016 general election, and elevated to national prominence when Fine Gael formed a minority coalition with several Independent TDs, with external support from Fianna Fáil.
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Zappone was one of the Independent TDs who participated in government talks with Enda Kenny and his colleagues. I have significant familiarity with those negotiations, having worked as an independent facilitator in the process. In my notes from that time, I wrote that Zappone appeared “somewhat over-awed and was like someone on their first day in university, but she quickly found her feet and was a canny operator”.
She certainly brought a depth to the discussions. She had a clear focus on national issues, and she made reform of existing abortion legislation a breaking point for her participation. While the other Independents were taking, and throwing shapes, she concluded her own deal with Kenny. In return, she was rewarded with several policy commitments in the final programme for government document, and a cabinet position.
She became the first openly gay woman to hold ministerial office and only the second US citizen to sit at cabinet (holding dual citizenship, like Eamon de Valera). Disappointingly, however, she has little to say about being an Independent minister (a rare species in Irish politics). Major political episodes, including the leadership transition between Kenny and Leo Varadkar, also pass without significant reflection.
During her term as minister for children and youth affairs, there was increased investment in childcare – secured after a standoff with Paschal Donohoe when, she reveals, she wrote to the minister for public expenditure warning that without additional money she was prepared to resign from government. “You did the best of all the ministers,” Kenny said after the budget negotiations were concluded. She also handled with dignity the shocking revelations about the discovery of human remains at the mother-and-baby home at Tuam, Co Galway.
Zappone lost her Dáil seat in the 2020 general election. She quickly decamped to the US, in part to leave behind the voters’ rejection, but also because her grief for Gilligan was still raw. “I longed for companionship coupled with physical intimacy,” she writes. At a different time, Zappone’s background, achievements and experience would see her included on any serious line-up of prospective presidential candidates. But a failure to win a Seanad seat earlier this year combined with controversies in 2021 – related to a proposed appointment as UN special envoy on freedom of opinion, and a private party in the Merrion Hotel during the Covid-19 crisis – damaged her reputation.
Was she more effective as an insider than she had been previously as an activist? The answer in Love in a Time of Politics is not always clear. Yet, still, this is a book not without merit. Many readers will share in Zappone’s grief for Gilligan, and rejoice when she later finds love again with a new partner.
Kevin Rafter is full professor of political communication at DCU and author of Dillon Rediscovered
