I wanted to be a student again. I’m interested in law and, as for being a Catholic, I’ll probably go down with the ship. But, in the meantime, I’ll keep looking to see if there’s any auld lifeboat we could build.”

This is how former President Mary McAleese answered two questions on why she’s studying Canon Law and re-engaging with Catholicism. She was speaking in UCD where she had been conferred with the Ulysses Medal for her work in justice and the contribution it made to Irish society.

I admire people who are very intelligent but who wear their intelligence with an ease that makes all sorts of people comfortable around them. Dr Mary McAleese is such a woman. She has an ability to break down the most complicated, ethical and moral questions and present them in a language that makes complete sense.

So when asked about Pope Francis’ plan to have a synod of bishops advise him on family life today and whether or not church teaching should change, she took plain speaking to a new level.

“The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the pope on family life – it is completely bonkers.”

While she acknowledged that a questionnaire was being sent to Catholics, she said she’d written to Pope Francis with a much simpler questionnaire with only one question: “How many of the men who will gather to advise you have ever changed a baby’s nappy? I regard that as a very, very serious question,” she said.

She said Pope Francis had created mass expectation for change. Whether or not he can deliver is yet to be seen, but she felt the odds of it happening were “very poor”.

Turning to other matters, Dr McAleese was asked if bankers should be jailed? “I do believe in culpability,” she said, “it needs to be pursued if we are to encourage good behaviour rather than bad.” She described dressing up to meet the bank manager when she and her husband Martin went to buy their first home. “He was a wise man who took early retirement. He said that in his day, bankers wanted to help people, but it was now about commission for me and that culture offended him.”

Commenting on the economic mess the country landed itself in, she refuted the idea that most people just got greedy during the boom. “Most people invested in their family and home.” She did feel that young couples had been hit disproportionately by austerity. “Those who bought homes at the height of the market, who had two good jobs, whose mortgages are front-loaded, have a couple of kids, crèche and maybe one job gone, had taken a disproportionate hit.”

She said she admired the stoicism and solidarity of the Irish people after the economic crash and disagreed with the view that we were passive in our reaction to it. “I think it’s momentum to get through, it’s let’s knuckle down and get through so we can grow again.”

That’s plain speaking at its best.