TINY, almost ballerina like in appearance, she lives across the road from her office. Her house is comfortable, rather than intimidatingly imposing. She drives a new, functional car, not a status symbol. Above all, she always appears happy. Few successful people seem less driven than Mary Finan, managing director since 1983 of Wilson Hartnell Public Relations, and now the first woman to be appointed President of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
She is more than content: she is openly in love with life. "I love life so much, I worry about getting older, I hate having to die. If I seem happy, it's because I always unconsciously push unpleasant things to the back of my mind. But I'm actually very bad at knowing myself or explaining myself; it's my friends who tell me I have a capacity for not choosing to focus on the unpleasant."
Many would agree that it is quite a feat to be successful in Dublin while also remaining popular. The utterly uncomplex Finan has sustained a high public profile for more than 20 years and continues to like her adopted city. "I love Dublin," she says with the big gestures that accompany her conversation. "I love it, life here is great - or at least, my life here is great. I have to say I don't have a great sense of privacy.
"The only thing I don't like about here is the gossip. There's a certain whiff of begrudgery that you come across now and again about very fine people who have done fine things.
"I can forgive achievers almost anything. We need doers; we need people who are dedicated. Society needs achievers and doers. There is a certain tendency that when people reach the pinnacle, others feels obliged to criticise them."
If she owes her happiness to her enjoyment of life, she probably owes her sanity to running, to which she was a late convert. About 20 years ago Finan - who hated all sports at school and has yet to forgive the girl who once pushed her on to a basketball court and thrust a ball at her ("I put it into the wrong basket, our basket, at my very first attempt and I'm still waiting for the applause") - runs three times a week: her Saturday and Sunday morning runs around the Belfield cross country course have become a personal ritual.
Though she appears very much a part of the Dublin scene, she is from Co Roscommon. Born at Loughglynn on August 2nd, 1944, she was the eldest of seven children. "We had a farm, my father was a teacher and later, from the late 1940s, a politician. He sat in the Dail and was later elected to the Senate. So he was away in Dublin a lot, and I remember the way we used to wait for his car to appear on the drive on the Friday evenings after the week in Dublin." John Finan was a member of Clann na Taltin.
"It was an idyllic childhood. The house wasn't particularly grand, but there was a long drive. There were fields at the back that sloped down to a lake, Loughglynn
Lake. It's Very beautiful." The scene was overlooked by a convent where the community, the Medical Missionaries of Mary, made delicious cheeses".
Finan's memory of the lake is dominated by the yellow and blue irises. "The convent was in the middle of woodland. In the springtime it was carpeted in bluebells. It looked like that painting by Leech, The Goose Girl, there was so much colour."
Country life for the Finan family ended soon after John Finan lost his Dail seat in the general election of 1951. "I was about eight, I think. We moved to Ballsbridge and then on to Rathgar." At St Louis in Rathmines, where she was headgirl, Finan's abortive basketball career was overshadowed by her success at debating in Irish and English. "I love debating, so when I went to college I was very involved with the L&H and Dram Soc. For a while, I even thought I would be an actress. I had also become very interested in Irish at school although I didn't do it at college."
Her three years as an arts student studying English and French, were, she says "wonderful bliss". At the end of it, however, she made the time honoured discovery common to many arts graduates - "I realised on applying to the usual places, RTE, the IDA, that I was unemployable. It was a bit of a shock. So I kept applying and decided to do an MA, by exam and thesis. I was going to write my thesis on Oscar Wilde. Then before I'd really started it, I was offered a job by Joe Mac Anthony of Kenny's Advertising. I went to Denis Donoghue and asked his advice, he told me that as I wasn't an academic, I had better take the job." She did.
ONE of Finan's greatest assets is her ability to take a joke. The biggest part of her is her hearty, often hysterical laugh; a strange, engaging entity with a life of its own. Emotional, expressive and impulsive, she strikes one as an extremely disciplined, likable scatterbrain who always wears feminine suits to work. Sitting in the cheerful yellow kitchen of her very yellow house with its exciting collection of work by living and many young Irish artists, she seems amused to be discussing her life. "Geoff, my husband, is far more interesting than I am - he's the one you should be interviewing."
Geoff Mackechnie, a vague, dreamy Englishman whom she married on New Year's Day in 1972, is now head of the Business Studies Department in Trinity. "He's gentle, patient and very nice to live with and a wonderful role model for Victoria, our daughter. He's the only man I ever met that I could have a life long marriage with. The only thing he doesn't indulge me on is opera. When we go to Wexford (the Wexford Opera Festival), he goes to the local cinema." Of course, he is indulgent - didn't he let her paint the entire house yellow, a colour he does not like?
"His theory complements my practice. But I'd like it put on the record that he painted his study red."
Finan does not live in the past and her answers are quick, instinctive and at times appear to surprise her. Admitting to being vague about dates she says: "I'm actually bad about anything to do with figures. And time as well. I have no concept of time. When things happen, they either seem long ago, or yesterday, I can never place them precisely."
She is uncharacteristically accurate about her three year television career. Soon after taking her BA in 1966, she was offered a job as a presenter on an Irish language quiz programme, Ce He with Liam Devally, now a judge. There were a further two programmes, Ceist Agam Ort, followed by Ceim Ar Aghaidh. "I can remember this clearly because when I met Geoff in the August of 1970, and began going out with him, he said he never watched RTE because the only time he felt inclined to was on Saturday evenings when there was this awful - Irish language programme. That was the show I was in, but I didn't tell him at the time." By that time she had left Kenny's and had been working for Peter Owens advertising, which she joined in 1968 for "about two years".
In October 1971, Finan was recruited by Wilson Hartnell Advertising which was planning to set up a separate public relations company. "All of my work in the ad agencies was in PR departments."
But why public relations? "Of course there is a lot of cynicism about public relations but that's because there is a lack of understanding about its role. It is about advising companies how to behave. It is not about saying things; it is about doing things that will earn the support and confidence of staff, customers and investors.
"The important thing about PR is that everything a company says, or that a practitioner says on behalf of a company, is rooted in reality and has substance. Without this substance, the information is empty and PR loses credibility." Central to public relations, according to Finan, is the management of the various relationships both internal and external, that matter to a company - "relationships such as staff, customers and investors and also community groups such as environmental organisations and residents' associations".
Finan is a career woman - for some the ultimate career woman - and says she had little interest in children. "My brothers and sisters had lots of children. Victoria has 20 cousins. I never thought about having a baby. I was enjoying life and then when I was 35 I found out I was pregnant." Victoria was born in February 1980 and, Finan says "her birth has been the best thing in my life".
"No one prepared me for how wonderful it would be. Nor for the absolute love. She is a lovely person, I'm not just saying that because she is mine, but she really is a good, kind person. Although she is quiet, when she is not here I really miss her.
Often accused of being too happy, Finan has had her sorrows. While Victoria's birth was her greatest joy, the death of her father in 1984 has been her greatest loss. "I always dreaded thinking about the fact that one day he would die," and as she describes the early morning phone call, she begins to cry.
Three years ago she faced another crisis when Geoff collapsed and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery for an abdominal aneurism. "He was only given a 50/50 chance. I remember the surgeon telling me the 12 hours following the operation would be crucial. I drove back, very upset, but tried to be rational, thinking `I know I'm capable of looking after Victoria'."
Gate Theatre director Michael Colgan, who refers to her as his best friend, recently told a story during a television interview which catches Finan's spontaneity. "Mary had met a friend," said Colgan, "and she asked her about her mother." There was an awkward moment as the friend told Finan her mother had in fact died. "Oh that's terrible," said Finan. "What happened?" The bereaved replied: "It was the big C." Finan's shocked response was as memorable as it was innocent. "She drowned?" While Finan laughs at the story, she does point out the conversation took place about 15 years ago at a time when the Big C was not as widely used a euphemism for cancer as it is today, liven so, it is a good story and she laughs again at the memory of it.
Colgan's friendship with Finan began when he was appointed to the Gate, where she was a board member: "Mary has great courage and huge heart. She supports living artists. Everybody working in the arts in Ireland believes that if even an average proportion of the population had Mary's commitment and generosity that we would be living in some sort of Utopia. Theatres would be full, as would art galleries and cinemas." He also describes her as "the ultimate feminist", stressing "she just does it, she doesn't talk about it".
Of her election to the presidency of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, which endorses the city's confidence in Finan's contribution to Dublin's business life, she says: "I was very surprised and almost over whelmed by the warm and supportive reaction of the members. It's been very gratifying and I can't let them down. I want to focus on two specific areas, crime and transport."
FINAN'S presidency, which follows a year as deputy vice president and a further year as vice president, coincides with the Chamber's very real concern about the necessary excavations for the construction of the LRT, Light Rail Transport. "It will cause a two year disruption of the existing, already congested streets and it could cause some businesses to close," she says. "I would like to stress that the Chamber has an open mind and we are merely raising the important questions now. They need to be asked before it is too late. This is a huge investment and we want to get it right."
Her commitment to an assertive crime control policy is based on the recent findings by the Chamber security committee which estimates that crime costs Dublin business between £150 million and £200 million a year.
"I am genuinely pleased to be giving back something to the Dublin business world because it has given me so much," she says. "I know so many business people, very bright individuals, who work so hard to generate jobs for people and their families. I also know many academics and people in the arts, and I feel some of them tend to undervalue the practical contribution business makes to society, aside from employment. Critics tend to forget that companies buy more Irish art than individuals do.
"My job means being taken into the trust of the people I work for. I spend my days meeting bright and dedicated individuals; it enhances my quality of life. That's why I'm satisfied to go home in the evening because I get so much from my working day."
