MINISTER OF EDUCATION
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS, JUNE 2002 - SEPTEMBER 2004
TÁNAISTE FROM 2008
Minister for Agriculture and Food September 2004 - May 2008
First woman appointed as Minister to this Department
Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment
May 2008 - 22 March 2010
Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills
March 2010 - March 2011
Tánaiste and Minister for Health
January 2011 - March 2011
‘I like to be on the inside track. I get a great buzz from it. I like the sense of power … I like being known.’
Interview with Mary Coughlan 1992 - Úna Claffey ‘The Women who Won.’ The Attic Press, 1992
‘You decided where you are going to be and what you need to do over a certain period and then you say, ‘Right I’m going to make a go for this’. Mary Banotti, Something about Mary.’ Currach Press, 2008.
Mary Coughlan was born in May 1965 in Inver, County Donegal. She was the eldest of seven, with five brothers and a sister.
Mary lived what she described as ‘a country life’. Her mother was at home and her father was a school teacher. Her mother had been a hotelier but she gave up work when Mary was small.
Mary was educated in the Ursuline Convent, Sligo and later at University College Dublin where she graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science, before qualifying as a social worker.
‘We were part of the community. My father was a big community activist.’ Her family were Fianna Fáil and her Uncle Clem was a T.D.. Mary's earliest memories were of the 1980 election when he was elected to the Dáil.
In a 2008 interview, she told Mary Banotti that it was then that the whole family became involved in national politics, and that she and her siblings were involved, but that they were ‘probably more of a hindrance than a help.’
When Clem was killed in a car crash, her father, Cathal won the by-election and became a T.D. for Donegal South West. Cathal served just 3 years as a TD, he died from cancer in June 1986, he was 48 years old.
Mary completed her University College Dublin final exams and stood in the by-election. Elected at the age of 21, Mary was the youngest TD ever elected.
Speaking to Úna Claffey in 1992, Mary stated that she 'was convinced that being young and a woman helped her.’
In 2018 Mary recalled that the Dáil reflected ‘a lot of the society that I represented in Donegal, in that the party would have been made up of older people, older men, who would have absolutely no time for women or young people.’ Martina FitzGerald, Madam Politician Gill Books, 2018.
Mary met her husband David Charlton when she was a T.D.. They had 2 children, born in 1997 and in 1999. Mary calls them as her ‘election babies’. Cathal was born a day after the 1997 General Election, while Maeve was born 2 years later, in the middle of the 1999 local elections campaign. Appointed a Minister of State 2001, Mary's son was just 4 and her daughter 2. Sixteen months later she was in Cabinet. Mary credits her mother as a ‘huge support’, who gave her ‘back-up at home.’ She recalled that as a Cabinet Minister, she went back to Donegal to see a nativity play, returning to Dublin after the play was over. The round-trip was over 460 kms and took over 7 hours.
During Mary's time as a member of Dáil Éireann, the family experienced a number of challenges, with her husband David being badly injured in a car crash. David Charlton died in 2012.
Many thanks to Mary Coughlan for allowing access to her election literature and images. Thank you also to Alan Kinsella for access to his archive, the RTE Photographic archive and Maedhbh McNamara for access to her research.