I was born in Co Louth. My father was the local schoolteacher and I grew up in a rural parish in the 1950s and 1960s.
People always ask me if my rural upbringing inspired a love of nature, but I think that is a wrong way of approaching the matter. Why is a love of nature something weird and odd? Everybody should have a love of nature.
Growing up, there was no television, no such thing as internet or mobile phones. There were seven in my family and other people had much bigger families than us. You played with your siblings and the local people in the parish. You climbed trees and went to the river. You knew where the birds’ nests were.
In 1967 free secondary school education was introduced, so children that previously worked on the land, as they couldn’t afford to go to school, now didn’t have to leave school at 14 to join the workforce or emigrate.
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My father taught me for fifth, sixth and seventh year. He kept my year in school for another year so we could get scholarships to secondary school. All four people in my year got scholarships. A lot of primary schoolteachers around the country did that with their pupils – they went above and beyond the call of duty.
At home my father was Daddy and at school he was Sir. I would imagine him metamorphosing on the road on the way home. He didn’t treat us any differently at school, there was no favouritism.
My mother, like everybody’s mother in those days, didn’t bring an income into the home, she stayed at home. That was the way it was. You weren’t allowed to work in a lot of cases, like the Civil Service, if you were married. At the time you couldn’t conceive of a world where mothers worked.
My parents were very much in favour of education. After I finished secondary school I got a scholarship to UCD. There were no points – you could study what you liked. You stood in whatever queue and said you were going to do whichever degree when you arrived at university.
My husband loved the same food as I do. I could never go with a fellow who didn’t eat onions
Back then girls didn’t do maths and science at secondary school, but two years before me one of the girls in my school had gone off to do science and I thought, well, if she can do it, I can do it. I studied science, physics, chemistry, maths, mostly things I had never studied before, and I loved it.
I lived in Loretta Hall on St Stephen’s Green, which was a very swanky hostel, and I went off with two other girls also doing science on our bicycles every day to Belfield, UCD’s science campus.
A lot of my friends from university had surnames starting with M, N and O, as for lectures you were assigned seats in alphabetical order, so you sat by the same people every day. You also got to know people through partner work in the lab. Friends were made for you in that way, and the loneliness that kids today have in college didn’t happen at all.
I met my husband at college. He was a physicist. He was kind, patient and great fun, and he’s all of those things still. He also loved the same food as I do. I could never go with a fellow who didn’t eat onions. We have been married for 48 years.
After college I found a job working for An Foras Forbartha, which gave advice to local authorities and the government about the potential environmental impacts of building projects. Part of our job was also to improve the Irish public’s awareness of environmental matters by going on the radio, giving talks, putting out newsletters, these sorts of things.
I started my career in 1974, a year after the marriage bar was removed. Many people I was in secondary school with didn’t go to university and had given up work when they got married. Working women were uncommon at the time but I had my first child after being married for five years and it never occurred to me to stop working. Back then there weren’t things like creches. My neighbour minded my children so I could go to work.
In 1987 Charlie Haughey decided that we were all living above our means, so An Foras Forbartha was abolished. I was pensioned off; I must have been one of the few people who was receiving a pension and the children’s allowance at the same time. After that I worked as a lecturer in what we now call TUD, teaching on the master’s course in sustainable development. I did that until I retired in 2014.
In 1990 RTÉ produced the Directory of Women Contributors to Radio and Television, a book of women who were experts in certain fields like education or money, and so could be asked to talk about them on air. I was featured as someone who could speak about wildlife.
Today you can’t imagine the importance of that. There was no book of men who could do things, because men had everything and a woman’s voice was so hard to find. I was invited to contribute to programmes because of it.
In fact, 30 years later, on Mooney Goes Wild, the wildlife programme we started in 1995, I am still the only woman on it.
I’m of the granny generation now, I have seven grandchildren I am very proud of, though I wonder what kind of world they will inherit. Anyhow, I’m doing my best for them.
In conversation with Hosanna Boulter. This interview is part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland. Éanna Ní Lamhna is spokeswoman for this year’s Glennon Brothers National Tree Day on October 2nd. Supported by the Tree Council, National Tree Day offers primary schoolchildren an opportunity to step away from the books, embrace the outdoors, and connect with nature. treeday.ie
