Still not a word of apology to be heard

Saturday's Irish Times carried an obituary of Eileen Flynn-Roche. The obit is reprinted below.

Eileen Flynn-Roche was crucificed by both church and state.

As a member of the Catholic Church I am deeply ashamed of the action of my co-religionists but I am also angry that the church has not now issued a statement of apology.

Has the HolyFaith congregation issued any sort of apology?

"I explained," Eileen Flynn told the tribunal, "that I could not stand back from the situation. I was living in the town. My responsibilities and my life were there."

The honesty and herosim of those words compared to what Sister Anna Power said to the Employment Appeals Tribunal: "I put it to her that it would be in her best interest if she could find alternative employment."

"She just flaunted it and did not try to hide it or redeem herself", Sister Anna said.

Sister Anna offered to arrange for a parish priest in England to look after her during her pregnancy.


EILEEN FLYNN-ROCHE, who died suddenly on the evening of September 9th, was one of a small group of women who became, in the early 1980s, symbols of the deep tensions in Irish society around issues of religion, morality and sexuality.

Like Joanne Hayes in the Kerry Babies case and Ann Lovett, the 15-year-old schoolgirl who died while giving birth in secret, she was an accidental lightning rod for the emotions sparked by profound social change.

Her case became infamous, not because she set out to cause a scandal, but because she refused to be ashamed of herself.

As Eileen Flynn, she arrived in the Co Wexford town of New Ross from her native Co Laois in 1978, to work as a substitute teacher of English and history in Good Counsel college. When a permanent post became vacant in the town's Holy Faith convent school, she received a strong recommendation from her employers at the college and was given the job.

Her life changed when she came across a distressed child in the town and brought her home to her father's pub. There she met Richie Roche, a publican whose wife had left him, and who was vice-chairman of the town's Sinn Féin cumann. The mildly bohemian reputation of the pub and Roche's political affiliations were believed to be contributory factors to the subsequent events.

Divorce was still unconstitutional, so Flynn and Roche could not marry, but when they began to live together she regarded herself as being, as she later told the Employment Appeals Tribunal, in "a family unit in everything but name".

At the start of the school year in September 1981, the principal of the Holy Faith school heard that Flynn was living with Roche. Two months later, the young teacher was pregnant.

In April 1982, the manager of the Holy Faith schools in Ireland, Sr Anna Power, arrived in New Ross and, as she put it to the Employment Appeals Tribunal: "I put it to her that it would be in her best interest if she could find alternative employment."

She offered to arrange for a parish priest in England to look after her during her pregnancy.

Such a situation was not especially unusual in an Ireland which had developed mechanisms for keeping unorthodox pregnancies out of sight.

What was unusual was that Flynn declined the offer.

"I explained," she told the tribunal, "that I could not stand back from the situation. I was living in the town. My responsibilities and my life were there."

It was not her pregnancy, or even her relationship with Roche, that led to her subsequent dismissal, but her honesty.

As Sr Anna put it: "She just flaunted it and did not try to hide it or redeem herself."

The immediate context of Flynn's sacking in August 1982, after she had given birth to her first son Richard was the anger of the order and complaints from parents in the town. The broader context, however, was an attempt to halt the drift away from Catholic control over moral and sexual behaviour.

The campaign that led to the 1983 anti-abortion referendum was already well under way. Flynn's dismissal represented a parallel attempt to re-establish the boundaries of change.

This was reflected in the judgment by Judge Noel Ryan in the Circuit Court after she appealed the refusal of the tribunal to overturn her dismissal: "Times are changing and we must change with them, but they have not changed that much . . . with regard to some things.

"In other places women are being condemned to death for this sort of offence."

Though in more moderate tones, Mr Justice Declan Costello, in the High Court in 1985, upheld the view of the nuns that her "conduct was capable of damaging" their efforts to uphold Catholic "norms of behaviour".

Legal costs prevented her from appealing the case to the European Court and her failure to join a union left her with little institutional support.

In this atmosphere, it was remarkable that Flynn's relationship with Roche survived and that she continued to live in the town and care for their five children.

They married after divorce became legal and she worked in the two bars they ran together. She was a popular figure among customers, who came to respect her as "a great character". She missed teaching though and did voluntary work on a community literacy scheme before finally returning to her profession in the town's CBS primary school.

Though her death came tragically early, Eileen Flynn- Roche lived long enough to be a respected mother and teacher.

This was, perhaps, the best answer to those who regarded her as a danger to the morals of Irish society.

• Eileen Flynn-Roche: born 1953; died: September 9th, 2008

© 2008 The Irish Times