Political Spice

Date: 09/10/1997

INITIALLY dubbed the 'Spice Girls contest', this light-hearted comparison between the world's hottest pop group and the Irish presidential race was spoilt when latecomer Derek Nally joined the four female candidates just before nominations closed.

Fine Gael MEP Mary Banotti is also doing her best to ensure that the campaign is more than the 'glamour contest' it threatened to become at the start of the presidency battle.

True, the former nurse and social worker has had a makeover. Perhaps comments from a senior member of her party that they would need to spruce up her image had an effect.

Out have gone the baggy jumpers and scarves and in have come the snappy business suits and a new haircut. “She looks tidier,” admits one member of her campaign team. “Not so wispy.”

But makeover aside, Banotti is trying to steer the election contest towards discussing issues, which she sees as her strength, rather than focusing on personalities. She has complained that the Irish are “sleepwalking” through the election and has demanded some serious debate instead of choreographed photo opportunities and “safe” speaking events.

Widely admired for her dedication and conviction politics, Banotti is determined to display her integrity. Once voted one of the top ten environmental legislators in Europe, she is the only candidate who has refused - on 'green' grounds - to use posters in her campaign, even though, as a team member admits, this could work against her.

When she was first elected to the European Parliament 13 years ago, Banotti was rather overshadowed by her fellow Fine Gael MEP for Dublin, former Finance Minister Richard Ryan. But she carved out a niche for herself and worked assiduously, putting hard work for causes before boosting her own career and maintaining a high profile.

“When she gets involved she does so with absolute commitment. She is totally immersed,” says fellow Fine Gael MEP John Cushnahan.

The flip-side to this commitment, according to loyal but sometimes exasperated friends, is that she expects everyone to work as tirelessly as she does. “She is pretty much a workaholic. Work is her life. She is not the patron saint of inaction and she would rather 'do' than 'consider',” says one. Time out is low on her priorities, although she does enjoy walking and reading as relaxation.

One of her former colleagues describes Banotti as “aerodynamic” and able to work all night. “She has a genuine approach, but she is very demanding, with the best of intentions. She tries to be fair, but sometimes comes across tough.”

Her supporters say that Banotti's caring and compassionate nature shows through the causes she espouses, for example the environment, women's issues, abducted children and disabled people.

“Maybe this comes from her own life,” says one former colleague, who describes a moment in the campaigning for the European election in 1994 when Banotti visited a support group called Turning Point. “You saw the pain in her face. She held hands with them and it was a moment of being completely vulnerable.”

Banotti can come across as a loveable but difficult aunt. “Mary is very well-meaning, but at times she is badly organised and scatty. She gets flustered and is slightly chaotic. She is a roller-coaster,” explains one friend.

Emotional and highly-strung are words often associated with the would-be Irish president. “She often got cut up,” adds a former acquaintance.

Once when Fianna Fáil MEP Paddy Lalor made a disparaging remark about her younger sister, Nora Owen, who also happens to be deputy leader of Fine Gael, Banotti created a stir by rushing across the chamber towards him at great speed. “I felt like strangling him,” she admitted afterwards.

On another occasion, she burst into tears in the press room at a parliamentary session in Strasbourg. She had been hoping for good media coverage of her report on abducted children, only to have Irish Green MEP Nuala Ahern steal her thunder by announcing to journalists that she had been an abducted child.

But Banotti has been given much credit for her hard work as the European Parliament's mediator in cases involving abducted children. Working with no budget and only one special adviser, she has managed to bring home children snatched and taken abroad by one parent following the break-up of a relationship.

Banotti has, in the past, muttered darkly that she has had “personal experience” of the issue, although she appears loathe to give details.

She married an Italian doctor, Giovanni Banotti, and lived in Italy until the couple separated and she returned to Ireland to raise their daughter Tania alone.

Her relationship with her daughter is very close. She is enormously proud of Tania, who has returned from working in the Gaza Strip for the United Nations to help her mother campaign.

Banotti has used her success as a single mother as a selling point and, perhaps surprisingly in a strongly Catholic country, her divorce has not had a negative impact on her campaign.

Commentators believe that people are unwilling to criticise Banotti for her failed marriage for fear of being perceived as backward-looking. She has made no secret of her divorce and mentioned it in her election leaflets, although it is a subject about which she is usually reticent.

So far, her campaign appears to be going well, if a little slowly. She is a serious candidate among some rather lightweight ones, including former Eurovision song contest winner Dana.

In contrast, Banotti identifies herself as the grand-niece of Michael Collins at the top of her curriculum vitae - and being related to the leader of the struggle for Irish independence is certainly doing her no harm.

While not the favourite to win the presidency race, Banotti, who is an effective campaigner, could gain ground in the run-up to the election on 30 October, say supporters. It is possible that she could take the lead with transferred votes, just as outgoing Irish President Mary Robinson did.

A recent poll, carried out before Nally entered the race, put her in second place, some way behind the favourite Professor Mary McAleese, Fianna Fáil's nominee for the presidency.

Banotti is the most politically experienced of the candidates, another factor which is felt to be in her favour. Although she ran unsuccessfully for the Dáil Éireann and the Seanad in the 1980s (one journalist remembers the humiliation of a dog urinating on her shoe the night she failed to win Dublin Central in 1983), her time as an MEP gives her a proven track record in politics. But she will have to extend her appeal beyond her natural liberal constituency.

Opinion is divided, however, on whether her 13 years working in Brussels and Strasbourg have proved a help or a hindrance.

Some feel that another year working for abducted children would have given her the opportunity to boost her profile enormously. But others point out that her long spell in the European Parliament has meant she is not tainted with the scandal which has dogged Irish politics.

Whatever the outcome of the election, Banotti's candidacy is likely to increase awareness of the institution she now represents, as well as raising her own profile in Irish politics.

BIO