A New Life: Fergus Finlay tells Sylvia Thompson he still enjoys politics but is devoted to his job as head of Barnardos
Former Labour Party political strategist Fergus Finlay (55) admits to being on a steep learning curve six months into his new job as chief executive of the independent agency for children, Barnardos.
"I expect I wrote somewhere between 300 and 500 speeches about children [for the Labour Party] but I've learnt more in the last six months than in all that time," he says.
On a more personal level, he adds, "I'm discovering one of the best possible things to do is to stick yourself on a learning curve in your mid-50s. You go home exhausted at the end of the day but you are working somewhere that makes a difference.
"There is a lot of debate about anti-social behaviour, hoddies and violence but people forget that these [ teenagers] were three-year-olds once and if help had been given when it was needed, and asked for, you'd have a lot less of these issues."
He is quick to praise the staff at Barnardos. "It's the most motivated organisation I've ever worked for. Ninety per cent of this work is the direct provision of services to children and their families. We're trying to secure better outcomes for these children and develop as strong an advocacy and communications role as possible to make people aware of the effects of poverty and educational neglect."
Issues, whether political, social or educational, have been at the heart of Fergus Finlay's work first as a trade unionist and then as a political backroom man in the Labour Party.
Born in Killester on Dublin's northside, Finlay's family moved to Bray, Co Wicklow when he was eight and then to Cork where he sat his Leaving Certificate and took at Bachelor of Commerce at University College Cork.
He cites a phrase in a biography of Jim Larkin by Emmet Larkin as a key influence. "He was said to have had 'a burning desire to close the gap between what ought to be and what is'. It sounds pretentious but I don't mean it to. The expression has stuck in my head ever since."
After many years working as a trade unionist - rising to the position of assistant general secretary of the Local Government and Professional Services Union (LGPSU) which became Impact, he was headhunted for the position of personnel manager for Ridgid Tool, an American multinational pipe manufacturing company.
After about two years in this job, his move to the Labour Party happened almost by chance.
"A close friend of mine, Pat Magnier, asked me to write a speech for Dick Spring and after that, I said I'd do it for a year but I worked with Dick Spring for 15 years and then later with Pat Rabbitte with two years."
He cites the election of Mary Robinson as president in 1992, the Divorce Referendum, the Downing Street Declaration and the Joint Framework documents as high points during those years. The general election in 1997 and the subsequent presidential election he cites as low points.
"In 1997, when Dick Spring called it a day, I thought I had outlived my usefulness and that the party needed new blood."
So he too left politics to write his memoirs as Labour Party aide and right hand man to Dick Spring (Snakes and Ladders by Fergus Finlay was published by New Island Books, 1998) and then became a director with the prominent public relations company, Wilson Hartnell.
"I hated that. I loved the people I worked with and enjoyed some of the clients but I found the work unrewarding. If you are in terrible trouble, you need good PR and it can save jobs and help firms get started but in between the two it doesn't add value."
He says he was surprised to be invited back as special adviser to the Labour Party by the current Labour Party leader, Pat Rabbitte. And two years later, it was Pat Rabbitte's turn to be surprised when Finlay quit.
Finlay says that choosing to work for an organisation helping disadvantaged children and families resonates with him on two levels. "It brought back into my head the early work I did as a trade union official, working on small cases, individual cases where there were opportunities to have a direct impact on people's lives."
The second big influence on him over the past 30 years is being the father and his wife, Frieda, being a mother of a woman with a disability. Mandy (30), their eldest daughter of four daughters, has Down's syndrome.
"You learn what it feels like irrespective of income or status to be a second class citizen. I know a lot of people with disabilities who have been unconsciously, unwittingly and callously discriminated against all their lives in big ways and little ways."
But does he miss the intensity of political life? "Politics is a strange business. You go through periods of high intensity. I get itchy now and again and I'm like everyone else, I love the spectator sport of politics and having worked in it, you know more about what's going on behind the scenes."
Then, he adds, "But I'm 150 per cent committed to this job and I feel really lucky to have it. It's a different tempo but I haven't had a bored minute since I started."