Janice and I occupied the upper part of the house at 22 Belgrave Road, Rathmines, all during the 1980s. The garden flat was successively occupied by Fergus and Deirdre Kingston, whom he subsequently married, and then similarly by Aileen and Hubert Montag. The structure of these 19th century Rathmines terraced houses lends itself to flexible family arrangements. Una on her return from the USA, where she had built up an impresario business, managing musical events with an international dimension, subsequently moved into the garden flat, where she currently (2002) lives.

Fergus had occupied the attic in succession to Una, after the latter went to the US, handing over to Aileen when he moved into student accommodation. Aileen occupied the attic while in the national College of Art and Design, where she met Hubert.

We never ran into the slightest trouble with neighbours or others about our irregular marriage arrangements. The Strasbourg case, which ran sporadically between 1982 and 1986, gained us nothing but respect. A consequence was that Nessa was no longer deemed 'illegitimate', the category being abolished legally as a result of the case. The detail of the case I leave to the legal text-books. I have commented on it briefly in the Greaves context, with a view to countering any misunderstanding which might arise from the study of his journals, where he comments erroneously.

The first divorce referendum was run prior to the conclusion of the case, and this of course contributed to the main case being lost, as the judges deferred to the verdict of the people. There was one judge who placed on record a dissenting verdict, and the legal opinion was that this was what the court really thought. If the referendum had been deferred, and the case allowed to finish without the explicit political message dominated by the Catholic view, it is probable that we would have won. A subsequent referendum would then have enabled the constitutional change to have taken place earlier. In the event, however, we had to endure a further decade of anomalous marital status, which however we had no difficulty in surviving.

Nessa went to school initially in Scoil Bhride, the famous Louise Gavin Duffy foundation in Oakley Road, which was Irish-language based. In fact, she went initially to an innovative pre-school group on Scoil Bhride premises, which Janice succeeded in founding, and which has continued successfully since, contributing to the revival of the school, which prior to that had been in decline. Janice now serves on the Board of Management.

There are political issues embedded here. The school was nominally attached to Rathfarnham Catholic Church parish, with the priest as manager, which of course was the initial anomaly, as the Irish language is not the property of the Catholic Church, which indeed during the 19th century did its best to suppress it. Under pressure from parents of all-Irish schools, the Department of Education had to accept a patronage procedure under Bord na Gaeilge, with management committees, on which however the Bishops retain nominating rights, so that the anomaly persists. At the time of writing (July 2002) there is a key case developing with a school in Dunboyne, with the Principal being sacked by the Board of Management over an issue relating to the teaching of religious doctrine in a multi-denominational context. Janice in the Scoil Bhride context remains alive to these issues.

Nessa then went in 1990 to the Louis nuns in Rathmines, this being the nearest second-level school. Her Quaker status helped in both cases to ensure survival in the predominantly Catholic environment. Our preliminary enquiries with the school gave a positive impression which in the following years was vindicated. The alternative would have been some Protestant fee-paying school, and subsequent comparative anecdotal studies, on the family and neighbourhood network, were favourable to Louis, which was non-fee-paying.

It emerged that most of the Louis girls came from far-away places like Tallaght, reinforcing our impression that Dublin parents mostly are under the illusion that some school far away is better than the one available locally. The scene is dominated by petty-bourgeois snobbism, and much peak-hour traffic is generated. Ownership and management of the school system remains a key issue on the political agenda, the current system being socially divisive and economically costly, with its parasitic transport load.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999