I first met Patricia (Pat) McAleer when she arrived in UCD from Omagh in the autumn of 1958. We were fellow history students at the feet of such great teachers as Dudley Edwards, Desmond Williams, FX Martin and Kevin B Nowlan. Pat was one of the brightest in the class and also one of the most glamorous. There were many disappointed hearts when it became clear that she had fallen for a sharp law student from Limerick, Des O’Malley.
Pat and Des married young and settled in Limerick where he practised law. They had six children. The cosy world of their early family life was disrupted in 1968, when, following the unexpected death of his uncle Donogh, Des was elected to the Dáil. There was even greater disruption in 1970 when Des became minister for justice against the background of upheavals in Fianna Fáil and the emergence of the IRA’s campaign of violence. As a result, the family became targets for the IRA, which blockaded their home and threatened to bomb it. Hasty, enforced evacuations were regular and, since Pat was frequently at home alone in her early 30s with young children while Des was in Dublin, she found herself in a frontline position, not unlike that of her friends in Northern Ireland, Pat Hume and Anita Currie. Her extraordinary personal courage in those years enabled Des to devote himself to keeping the wheels of state on the tracks.
Warm, gregarious and full of fun, Pat had a gift for friendship, and her humanity and good humour always shone through. Her generosity and caring nature manifested itself in many ways. She was always there for Des’s constituents, who remember her with gratitude. In the days of the Progressive Democrats, she gave comfort and support to the younger politicians and their partners.
Garret FitzGerald was very moved when Pat and Máirín Lynch came to say a private goodbye to Joan on her death in 1999 – a remarkable tribute to a political wife from the wives of opposition politicians who had felt such solidarity with her in life.
Pat never forgot her Omagh roots and constantly worried about her parents and family back there who, because of Des’s ministry and remarkable moral courage, also had to endure the hostile attention of the IRA, which twice attacked their business premises in the early 1970s.
In a rare public appearance, Pat went on the Late Late Show after the Omagh bombings in 1998 and articulated the scale of her sympathy for her fellow Northerners.
Pat did much more than stand behind her man. She took her place in the frontline with Des and shared with him the burden of his various public and political positions. She accompanied him on trade and investment missions abroad when he was minister for industry and commerce. She was by his side when he was expelled from Fianna Fáil “for conduct unbecoming”. She may not have been enthusiastic about his setting up the PDs, but once the decision was taken, she put her shoulder to that wheel. In later years she went to London with Des for three years when he represented Ireland, Denmark and Macedonia on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Pat’s political instincts, nurtured in UCD’s history department and fine-tuned during Fianna Fáil’s murkier days, served her country, North and South, well. She will be sadly missed by her extended family and friends. Des has lost a wife, a co-worker, and a companion.