Joan FitzGerald was said to have been the most influential Taoiseach's wife, but ironically she talked about actually hating politics. Recalling, in 1982, how she had felt about a second general election that year, she said her reaction was one of "horror, really and truly.
"I didn't think I could bear another election. I didn't think there would be one and I realised, too, from the moment the election was declared that there was a fair chance of Garret becoming Taoiseach and I don't particularly like that because then he belongs to the nation, not to me."
The election did indeed result in her husband becoming Taoiseach.
She never disguised her dislike of politics. "Unless one has an exceptionally strong and fine character, at any level of intelligence, politics brings out the bad rather than the good in a person," she once said.
Implacably opposed to her husband becoming involved in politics, when he did she nonetheless supported him totally. They were among the closest of couples, so much so that some speculated as to whether her voice had taken on his inflections or he had taken on hers. She became very significant behind the scenes, and it was said she broke her own record for phoning her husband - while Taoiseach - by ringing him 28 times one day. She was also credited with playing a role in numerous government appointments.
Her favourites included the former Labour Party leader Michael O'Leary, former minister of state Fergus O'Brien, former minister for foreign affairs Prof James Dooge, former Attorney General Peter Sutherland and former government press officer Muiris Mac Conghail. She also admired the then tanaiste, Dick Spring. "I think he's a great man," she said in 1982, "I think Dick Spring may well turn out to be the best leader Labour has had since Connolly." Her admiration, and otherwise, for people had little to do with party politics. In 1981 she said "I used to vote Fianna Fail myself - well, vote de Valera rather than the party," while during the 1987 general election campaign she retorted to an interviewer: "Indeed and I don't belong to Fine Gael." She also said then she "wouldn't really mind if Fine Gael didn't get in. And Garret would get over it. After a few days anyhow." Which is what happened.
She had extraordinary charm, unique authority and a tremendous independence of mind. Intelligent, cultured, liberal in outlook, direct and gregarious, she enjoyed people, and it was this capacity which enabled her to make her husband's way of life tolerable. Above all else she was a family woman, saying once: "My husband, children, and grandchildren mean more to me than anything else." They have three children: John, an economist who is married to Eithne Fitzgerald, former minister of state at the tanaiste's office; Mary, who was an academic for many years; and Mark, who is the managing director of auctioneers Sherry FitzGerald.
In latter years Joan FitzGerald was confined to the family home in Rathmines, crippled with arthritis, and lymphodoemia, which caused severe swelling of the limbs. She had been suffering from arthritis since 1977, when she was 53.
Her maiden name was Joan O'Farrell. She was born in 1924, in a suburb of Liverpool, to a Galway father and Dublin mother. Her father worked in the British colonial service, and had been based in the Ivory Coast. He was sent home suffering from malaria. He became violent, and on one occasion she remembered him trying to kill her mother. Many years later she said: "I have never forgotten it. In fact never a day goes by that I don't remember it."
They moved to Bray, where her father had a mental breakdown and was hospitalised permanently. Most of his pension was taken by the State towards his care, leaving the family "very, very impoverished. It was a traumatic and very unhappy childhood."
They moved to Geneva, to live with Joan's aunt, who was also her godmother. She paid for Joan's education. At 10 they moved to Dublin, living in Blackrock. Later at UCD she took an honours degree in economics. She claims to have been a bad student. "When I got to college and found boys, I had one hell of a social life . . . we would dance with everybody for the night," she said.
She and Garret FitzGerald met over tea after a French Society meeting, "on November 25th, 1943" as he recollects it in his autobiography All in a Life. "I took an instant dislike to him at first," she said. "He wore a Belvedere scarf and was absolutely full of himself." But he persisted.
In May 1945 he proposed, to no avail. Later that summer she told him about her family history, and her worries that her father's mental illness night be congenital. "She was therefore uncertain whether she should marry and have children," he remembered. The revelation "deepened my love for Joan," he said, and redoubled his determination to marry her.
In September 1945 she finally agreed. They married two years later on October 10th, 1947. She was 23, and he 21. "We hadn't a bean, and we went everywhere by bicycle, but we had no debts," she said, remembering their early years. Almost 40 years later she was asked by a journalist what would frighten her most of all. After some pensive moments she replied: "being left without Garret." She has been spared that.