Fine Gael candidate elected to the European Parliament at her first attempt and held the seat for 20 years until 2004Former Fine Gael MEP Mary Banotti served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Dublin constituency across 20 years when first elected in 1984. Photograph: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.
Mary Banotti: 'My daily journey to school remains etched on my mind. In those days Clontarf was much less developed than it is today.' Photograph: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.ie After her father died her mother returned to work as a domestic science teacher at Cathal Brugha Street. She found it difficult to find someone to mind the children and Mary and her sisters were sent as boarders to her mother’s old school — the Dominican Convent in Wicklow. She enjoyed her time at the school, particularly its emphasis on drama and music.
Nursing allowed her to travel and she worked in New York and Canada before going to Kenya as a development aid worker. There she met and married an Italian doctor, Giovanni Banotti, and the couple lived in Rhodesia before moving on to Rome, where her daughter Tania was born. She was selected as the party candidate to contest the 1983 Dublin Central byelection to fill the vacancy caused by the death of George Colley. While she failed to win the seat she performed well in the media and was selected by Fine Gael to stand for the Dublin constituency in the European elections of 1984.
In 1997, she decided to make a bid for the Fine Gael nomination to contest the presidency in succession to Mary Robinson. She first suggested this in a telephone call to party leader John Bruton in the spring of that year but had to overcome significant opposition in the party to get the nomination. In a keenly fought contest, she defeated Wexford TD Avril Doyle for the nomination but ultimately lost out to Mary McAleese in the election itself.