I wouldn’t eat and not do something, I’d be at least reading the newspaper – at the very least. God almighty, of course I would.” Marian Harkin is almost flabbergasted at the thought of spending her lunch hour just eating lunch. This is the kind of time management employed by someone who’s working between Ireland and Brussels as one of four MEPS representing 15 Irish counties in the European Parliament.

Her time to “zone out” is the drive home to Sligo, after landing in Dublin Airport on the 10.15pm flight from Brussels and her reprieve is sleeping on the plane, which doubles up as revitalisation for her long, late-night drive.

“This is a point in my life when I can do this,” she explains. “I ran for the European election in 1999 and didn’t get elected. I was a widow at the time and when I look back on it now I’m actually glad I wasn’t elected, because there was too much of a pull to home for me with two boys that age (the youngest was 15).”

Those two young boys are now 30 and 35 and on the rare occasions she doesn’t work through dinner Marian will eat with her son John who lives in Brussels and used to work for her: “But we don’t live in one another’s pockets.”

Her other son James is back in college. She’s eager to rave about her 14-year-old grandson Dylan: “I suppose every grandmother says it, but he’s a real nice guy. People meet him and say he’s a real nice kid, he’s that sort.”

Dad's death

From the small village of Ballintogher in Co Sligo, Marian’s father was a shopkeeper, while her mother, who has just celebrated her 88th birthday, worked at home. Marian was just 15-years-old and away at boarding school, the eldest of eight, when her father died.

“He was a man that was always reading,” she says.“He read a newspaper every day, and I know this sounds strange but I was actually talking to him about Bernadette Devlin and Charles de Gaulle a few hours before he died. I was only beginning to kind of see what was going on in the world, but I often thought afterwards, you know, I missed out on that.”

After completing a degree in science at UCD, Marian worked as a maths teacher for over 20 years and loved it.

“When a student is in front of you, particularly a student who believes they’re useless, that they’ll never master it ... when they realise: ‘God yeah, I can do that and it’s not just I can do it, I can understand it’. That’s very rewarding.”

Given that while Marian was teaching she was also (in a voluntary capacity) chairperson of the Council for the West, on the board of Ulster Community Investment Trust and appointed to the National Stations Board by two different Taoiseagh, her destiny was obvious.

On the day Country Living meets her, she is fleeting between meetings with Birdwatch Ireland, the postmasters and optometrists.

Isn’t it overwhelming, being in such high demand?

“Sometimes it can. Often an email will come in, it mightn’t even be from your constituency, and you know when you read it you’re about the 20th person or the 120th person to try and deal with this.

“Not only would it take you a week to sort it, if it could be sorted, but you mightn’t make any more progress with it. You try to respond as best you can, but you have to become careful that it’s not just about paper pushing, because that’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

Leader on the line

Marian is extremely passionate about Leader, saying she has been supportive of it “for forever”. She refers to the issues surrounding the future of Leader, whether it would remain embedded in the voluntary sector or whether it would come under the umbrella of the local authority.

“I vehemently (and I could use stronger words) disagreed with Phil Hogan’s approach on that, I felt it was a centralised approach – which I see happening more and more in Ireland. I was in a position to put down amendments, and got some of them through, and work with the Leader companies shaping the legislation, but I think one of the things people don’t often realise about European legislation is that there’s always an element of flexibility – particularly when it’s a directive. I was so afraid we’d lose Leader here in Ireland.”

Marian says the core of her disagreement with Phil Hogan is contained in a document published by his department, where “democratic deficit” is described as where elected politicians don’t have influence.

“In other words, their fingerprints weren’t over every single decision Leader made. But if you politicise Leader you lose it, and that’s my fundamental disagreement with him.”

Near miss

Mid our interview, which is taking place in a hotel restaurant, Marian is interrupted by someone congratulating her on her re-election.

“I sailed very close to the wind this time,” she contends graciously. “It was a windy election,” says her new friend.

“It WAS a windy election,” she laughs, “thank you.”

Clare, a big county where she always topped the polls, was no longer in her constituency for this election. Instead, there were five new counties.

“Louth. People were nice, but they didn’t know who I was,” she exclaims, “and most people in Laois didn’t know what constituency they were. I mean what was on our first leaflet? A map. A photograph of me on one side and a map on the other.”

She got through, by the skin of her teeth, and says her priorities this term are the trade deals, the mid-term review of CAP and disadvantaged areas.

There is no doubting Marian Harkin is dedicated to her work. She says life in Brussels can be solitary, which sounds grim, but Marian has a different take on it.

“I think if you like what you do then that gives you a great incentive to do it. In politics there are certain things you can achieve and that’s what gives you the satisfaction to keep going. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to find some way of improving how thing work.”